Tauren Tale
by gre7g
Summary: Separated from their tribe, Sanja and Jorga need help if they are ever going to get home.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Ah, there's one," Sanja said. She knelt in the long grass and removed the small trowel from her backpack. The tool had been carved from a stag's antler, and was well-suited to digging in Mulgore's rich soil.

Her little brother bent over the tuber as she cleared away the dirt. "Karras root? Bleah!"

Jorga groaned and put his hands around his furry neck. He made a face as if he'd been stricken with Plague. "I hate karras root. Just leave it there."

"You do, huh? But you like the bread Mom bakes, don't you?"

She looked up and their wide, black noses almost touched. He wasn't a bad-looking kid – when he wasn't covered in grime, at least. Bright-blue eyes sparkled from his black face like inquisitive little birds in a cave. A pure white splotch on his forehead stretched from one little horn to the other, and his fuzzy ears laid out to the sides, taking in her every word.

Jorga nodded without blinking. His nostrils flared a bit at the strong scent of karras root.

"Well, what do you think bread is made from?" Sanja went back to digging. "First we bury the roots in the coals of a fire, and we let them bake for a while. That softens the pulp and takes away some of the bitterness. Then we dig them out and wash them, and then we pound them into a paste with a wooden pestle..."

Sanja grabbed the root with both of her muscular hands and yanked it free. She looked back up, but the boy was gone. The brief moment of sibling bonding had passed as suddenly as it had come.

Jorga was exploring the grasslands. She could see only his short, fluffy tail sticking up above the tall grass. She watched it dart this way and that.

The Tauren girl sighed as she dropped the root and trowel into her pack. There was no point in being frustrated. Just because she enjoyed cooking and herbalism, there was no reason to think that he could appreciate them.

"I caught a toad!" Jorga declared. He returned triumphantly and shoved the warty creature in Sanja's face. "He's cool, huh?"

She stood back up and swung the pack over her left shoulder. "Whatever you say, kid."

"Well, I'm keeping him!" Jorga inspected the creature closely before shoving him unceremoniously in his pocket. "I think I'll name him Thurg."

"Oh, I see," Sanja said thoughtfully.

Thurg was the name of an Orcish trapper who had lived with their tribe earlier that summer. Most of the boys had thought that the Orc was the greatest guy ever. They helped polish his rifle and were fascinated by his steel snares and traps. But despite the boys' approval, Sanja just didn't care for the man.

During his stay, Sanja had grown quite close to the trapper's slave girl, Elizabeth. The human woman was weak and frail, but she was a quiet, thoughtful person. She was quick to help others and could be persuaded to share fascinating stories of her travels.

Thurg treated Elizabeth well enough - for a slave. He fed and clothed her, and he seldom beat her, but their relationship never did sit well with Sanja.

The Tauren occasionally took slaves after defeating another tribe in battle, but Thurg had never even seen Elizabeth's village, much less helped conquer it.

Thurg had purchased the girl from a Goblin in Ratchet for a pocketful of coins. The Goblins hadn't conquered Elizabeth's village either. They had merely purchased their slaves from the pirates who had raided a ship she had sailed on.

Although Sanja didn't say it out loud, none of this buying and selling of people seemed particularly honorable - especially for an Orc.

Everyone knows that Orcs treasure their honor in much the same way that the Tauren do. If nothing else, that was the reason their two peoples got along so well.

"I guess the toad looks a little like him," the Tauren girl said. "Same shade of green... wide mouth... warty skin... bulging eyes..."

"Hey!" her brother complained as the comparisons to his idol turned unfavorable.

Thurg croaked a complaint from the boy's pants pocket.

"Same voice too..." she added, turning away so her brother couldn't see her grin.

"You take that back!"

But Sanja was done tormenting her brother. Her eyes were fixed on the mountains to the west.

# # #

"What is that?" Jorga whispered.

"It looks... a little like a zeppelin."

The pair stared at the craft as it sank lower and lower. Horde zeppelins rarely crossed over southern Mulgore, but they were easy enough to spot when they did. Their red and black hulls proudly displayed the Horde crest, and their large wooden cabins looked like peculiarly-misplaced kodo carts.

This balloon was brightly colored and smaller... much smaller. Hanging underneath it was a basket that was large enough to hold perhaps only a single person.

"I don't think they're going to make it back over the mountain," Jorga said.

Sanja nodded in agreement. "I don't think they'll stay aloft much longer at all."

The pair stared in silence as the craft made a graceless touchdown just north of Gaia's Tears - the great waterfall that fed Stonebull Lake. They grimaced in unison as the balloon collapsed silently in the early-afternoon sunshine.

"Do you think they were hurt?"

Sanja was hesitant to venture a guess. She adjusted her backpack's straps for what looked like a long trek. "Let's see if they need help."

# # #

Jorga led the way up the mountain and Sanja followed at a more controlled pace. Sooner or later, the child's seemingly-boundless energy would fail him, but she intended to conserve her strength.

"It's getting dark." He loved to point out the obvious. "Mom's gonna' worry. We should have gone back for help, and then hiked up the mountain."

"I know," Sanja sighed, "but it would take even longer to head back now. The whole tribe will be mad, but I keep thinking about the person that could be trapped up there. They don't know if anyone is even coming to rescue them. I think they'll be even more worried, don't you?"

The boy nodded his head.

At least the moon would be full tonight. That was a blessing; a good omen, perhaps.

# # #

The pair reached the top of the plateau near midnight. Despite living in Mulgore their entire lives, neither had been up there before.

Sanja wished that it had still been daytime. The pale blue moonlight lit the mountain, but she would have loved to be able to see out across the valley from this vantage point. From up here, she bet that you could see the entire world.

Despite the summer heat, the mighty Bull's Pride, to the south, was still capped in white. Snow melt from the mountain fed the lazy creek that meandered across the lush plateau.

Although very broad to the south, the plateau grew steadily narrower as the stream headed north. The ground here was merely a hundred yards deep, and the ledges fell away sharply on both sides; with Mulgore to the east and Desolace to the west. To the north were the knife-edge peaks of the Thunderhorn mountain range, forever shielding Mulgore's tranquility from the despair in Desolace.

Sanja focused on the danger up ahead. The stream made one last graceful arc across their path before spilling over the edge into Gaia's Tears. If they were going to make it to the crash site, then they would have ford the creek.

# # #

"Be careful!" Sanja shouted as they approached the banks. The thunder from the falls was unmistakable.

"I'm scared," Jorga said. He clung to his sister's arm as they stepped down, into the chilly water.

"We'll go slow. Don't you let go of my hand until we get to the other side." She didn't really need to tell him that. He held her hand in a death-grip.

The water wasn't all that deep, or cold, or even fast. There was a current, certainly, but the real terror of the crossing was the moss-slicked rocks underhoof. Some of the round river-rocks shifted as they stepped, causing the pair to stumble and catch themselves. It was all too easy to imagine slipping and being swept out across the dark and over the falls.

"I'm scared!" the boy repeated.

"We're almost there!" she shouted in reply.

When at last they reached the other side, they laid in the grass a while and caught their breath. The crossing had been the most terrifying adventure of their short lives. Her nerves were shot. Mom would kill them both if she ever found out.

"Don't you ever," Sanja shouted, "tell anyone we did that."

Jorga didn't say a word, but he nodded and put his hand on his chest in promise.

# # #

"I can see it right there." Sanja said. She lifted her brother up and pointed with an outstretched arm. "But be careful. It's getting really rocky. Don't you get ahead!"

The boy lead the way and soon they had reached the basket – crushed somewhat from the impact, and laid over on its side. It had been woven from thin strips of wood and reinforced with bands of metal.

"Doesn't look too bad," Sanja whispered. "They might have survived the crash."

"I don't see any... bodies," Jorga volunteered.

Beyond the basket lay a strange, metal oven. Through the cracks, they could see a small, blue flame still flickering inside it.

"I bet this thing made it go!" Jorga whispered in awe. Like most Tauren children, he was fascinated by anything made of metal. Such items from the outside world were rare and strange in Mulgore.

Bo, one of the village elders, actually had a steel knife. He had traded it from an Orc before Sanja was born, and he treasured it like a war-bonnet.

Sanja cared little for such things, but it was hard not to mystified by such an exotic item. Although not as sharp as a obsidian knife, it was durable beyond all comprehension. Bo delighted the calves by flinging the thing at trees. He threw the knife in such a way that the tip stuck deep in the wood. What sort of magic kept the blade from shattering? It was beyond her comprehension.

Sanja ripped a length of shattered wood from the basket and pulled a fist-sized horanza nut from her pack. With a bit of hammering, she shoved the wood deep into the nut's soft meat. Jorga held open the oven's hatch, and Sanja put the nut inside, just over the blue flame.

Soon the oil inside the nut began to boil and crackle. The pale, yellow torch would not burn terribly long, but it would be bright enough to help look for survivors.

The girl steeled her nerves and tried to prepare for any carnage she might see, but there was no gore splashed across the rocks. She let out a breath of relief.

"Hello? Is anyone out there?" she called.

Jorga called too.

Hundreds and hundreds of cords were tied to a giant hook on the top of the oven. The thin ropes were long and tangled, and lead to scraps of cloth in the distance – cloth that had once been a beautiful balloon.

"Did you hear something?" Jorga whispered.

"Hello?" Sanja called again.

There was a rustling ahead, and a moan. The boy rushed forward and the girl approached more cautiously.

"I found something!" Jorga crouched over a dark tangle of rope. "It's tiny," he whispered.

And indeed it was. The creature was the size of a newborn, and it struggled against the knot of cords about as meekly.

"Here, hold the torch."

Sanja took out her knife - carved from a kodo's ulna - and carefully cut the cords away. "Don't squirm," she whispered, "I don't want to cut you by accident."

Sanja's work soon exposed a tiny man. It was the strangest sort of creature they had ever seen. Pale and mostly-hairless, it looked a little like Thurg's slave girl had, but it was tiny – far too small to be anything but a baby.

But a baby with a long, flowing beard? And a pink one, at that...

"Are you okay?" Jorga asked.

"Are you in pain?" Sanja asked quietly as she carefully cut the cords from its tiny hands and feet. "Is anything broken?"

"Oh, Good Samaritan! You put end to my strife," the creature mumbled, its eyes only partially-open, "lest I might become carryout... for the local wildlife."

The man looked up into the girl's furry face. His eyes went wide and jaw slack.

An adolescent, Sanja was only six feet tall and a tiny fraction of the 800 pounds that the grown-up bulls in her village weighed. Her summer fur was short, black, and was covered with many pretty patches of white. She wore a buttoned vest and pants of soft, un-tinted leather that were stitched together with sinew. She had no shoes, but the longer fur on her feet covered the tops of her hooves.

The man said nothing for a moment as he swallowed a (relatively) large lump in his throat.

"My, you're a tall one," he squeaked. His voice was even quieter and more shrill than it had been initially.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"What's he saying?" Jorga whispered.

"Something about me being big, I think." Sanja cleared her throat and tried to remember the polite greetings that Elizabeth had taught her. "Is it a pleasure to meet you, ma'am. My name is Sanja of the clan Lion Paw. My brother is this, Jorga."

Sanja reached out her hand and the man visibly flinched. After a moment of hesitation, he reached his tiny hand to her primary finger and made an effort to shake it. He smiled wide and greeted the two in most cheery fashion that she had ever heard.

"I am so pleased to make your acquaintance, young Tauren. I'm relieved to find that my rescuers are children!" he intoned without pausing or fumbling for words. "You have traveled over harshest land and through the darkest night. I owe you everything, despite how your allegiances brings fright. I am Kazbo Fizzgimbels, ace mechengineer. Brotherhood of Sprockets, and tweaker of gear. Transcriber of the arcane symbols and cataloger of relics..."

The introduction rambled on - the lines rhyming like a poem - but Jorga looked to his sister for explanation. "I can't understand his words," he whispered from the side of his mouth. "Do you think he's struck his head?"

"I think he said his name was 'Kazbo'," she whispered back. "He speaks the language that Elizabeth used, before she became Thurg's slave."

"You can understand it?"

"Some of it," she admitted, "but I don't have any idea what some of his words mean."

"It will be sunrise soon," she explained slowly in Common. She offered him a drink from a water skin that was almost as large as the man himself. "Then we can lead you back to my village. I doubt they can help fix your flying thing, but you can eat and rest there. They can guide your walk home."

Even in the torchlight, Kazbo seemed to turn a little pale.

Because of their alliances, the Gnomes and Tauren were enemies. But before the war, they had no prior grievances with one another. The Tauren tribes lived simply, with almost no technology. The Gnomes used technology in everything they did. Both races had magic, but the Tauren's was nature-based and the Gnomes used only arcane spells.

Had it not been for the world-wide struggle, it seemed unlikely that the Gnomes and Tauren would ever cross paths. The Tauren had been content to roam the prairie with the seasons, and the Gnomes researched the arcane obsessively from within their mountain fortresses.

As it was, it was hardly surprising that neither of the children had heard of the Gnomes before, much less seen one.

"Walk...?" he gasped. "But Kazbo's dirigible has merely been scratched. The stiches are torn; gears bent; and the lanyards unattached. I could fix it complete in an hour or less. With the right tools, Kazbo could even compress..." His words drifted off and he pulled on his beard, lost in thought.

"Perhaps the concept is flawed, yes, that's what I think. Why should it float in the air, like a cork in the sink? My craft needs a tether, and to grab clouds with a hook! Never have I seen such a design; not in scrolls or a book." His eyes lit up with inspiration. "Brachiation of the heavens, like an atmospheric chimpanzee! No other craft will rival its efficiency."

Sanja and Jorga shared a wordless look but the Gnome showed no sign of stopping. "Largely unchanged of course, but the engine requires modifications; ratcheting gears, modulators, and a samoplange to reduce vibrations. Kazbo will need the use of your forge and to borrow some tools; ore or ingots, bronze framework, and a few lesser jewels."

This made as much sense to Sanja as anything else the little man had said.

"Well..." Sanja stammered, "I'd like to help, but I don't think I'm strong enough to carry your craft down the mountain. I suppose you could ask some of the grown-ups back at the village. A couple of them could pick it up easily enough..."

Kazbo had not heard her words. He was looking around as if he had misplaced his knife. "Now that rogue, Theodore; I wonder which way did he go," he interrupted. "If Kazbo is to deliver him, we'll need to leave this plateau."

# # #

"You had a passenger?" Sanja took the torch back from Jorga. "We best split up and search for him. He could be in trouble."

The Gnome made a gesture towards the sputtering torch and spoke a short arcane spell, "Fluorescents, incandescents, banish the night. Flames of pure azure, I command you, ignite!" The yellow flame flickered out and after a moment, a steady and brilliant, blue flame replaced it.

"Wow!" the Tauren boy gasped. "That was amazing! Do some more!"

Kazbo didn't need Sanja to translate the child's Taurahe. The excitement of witnessing arcane magic was all over his face.

The Gnome's eyes gleamed with delight. "Resplendent, refulgent, make property exchanges;" he said, "enlighten and brighten, illuminate phalanges!"

Jorga stared with wide eyes as one by one, the very tips of the Gnome's fingers began to glow. They grew brighter and brighter until beams of light shone from each fingertip. Kazbo grinned and wiggled his fingers in front of the boy so that little spots of light played across his face.

Jorga clapped his hands and cheered. The tiny man smiled with satisfaction.

From his expression, Sanja suspected that Kazbo's magic was seldom appreciated as much as it was by the boy.

The older girl nodded, "Okay, everyone be careful. No one is allowed to fall off the cliff and get themselves killed."

Jorga sighed, disappointed that the magic show was at an end.

# # #

"Theodore!" Sanja called, "Hello? Are you out there?"

"Theodore!" the boys called too.

Sanja walked slowly and kept her eyes to the ground, looking for signs of blood. The sky lightened a bit, but dawn was still at least an hour away.

Gigantic scraps of cloth draped across the rocky ground. Walking over them made Sanja nervous. She worried that they could hide a hole or loose rocks underneath. She moved slowly, and with determined care. She hoped that both of the boys were doing the same.

Sanja was compelled to stop and run her fingers over the cloth. She had seen cloth before - Elizabeth had dressed in it - but this was so different still. Where Elizabeth's clothes were drab and coarsely woven, this material was brilliant and fine. It was as strong as light leather, but as weightless as a spider's web. Sanja wished she knew where such things came from. She had never imagined anything like it in her life.

"Theodore!" she shouted for the hundredth time. She heard the call echoed by her brother and the squeaky little man in the distance... and then something else... "Hello?" she called in Common. She perked her ears and held the torch behind her so that the quietly flickering flame would not cover any distant cries for help.

The moments stretched and stretched. She heard nothing more than the breeze. But then... in the distance... there was the noise once more. This time she was sure of it!

"This way! Come quick!" she yelled in Common and then again in Taurahe.

"Where are you?" Sanja called, walking towards where she had heard the sound. "Are you injured?"

Scraps of balloon covered all of the ground. Sanja worried that the poor man might be trapped underneath. She stepped carefully so as not to accidentally crush another tiny person underhoof.

Jorga ran up behind her. "Did you find something?"

Kazbo was not too far behind the boy, but he was struggling to catch his breath.

"Be careful," Sanja said with a gesture, "the cliff edge is right there."

The boys nodded. The Gnome rested his palms on his knees, and his glowing fingertips lit up his pointed shoes.

"I heard someone's voice nearby. I think he might be trapped underneath the fabric."

The boy listened with up-stretched ears for a moment. "Hello? Can you hear me?"

This time there was a distinct call for help. The trio, in unison, turned their heads to the cliff's edge.

# # #

"Stay here," she ordered the other two, but her eyes were focused on Jorga. He frowned and crushed his fists into his hips, but walked no further.

Sanja got down on her belly and crept forward as far as she dared. "Hello?" she called over the cliff's side.

After what seemed like an eternity, the girl backed up and returned to the others. "He's caught in the cloth... just over the edge of the cliff."

Jorga whistled low and grimaced.

Sanja ground her teeth a bit. The whistling wouldn't be so annoying, but ever since he learned how to do it, Jorga looked for any excuse.

"How strong is this cloth?" she asked the Gnome.

"Gnomish silk is superb. You'll find no equal in cloth," he squeaked. "If you would keep it from tearing, it could suspend Azeroth!"

Sanja was unimpressed with the tiny man's ramblings, but she had no better plan. She positioned herself and directed the boys to her sides. "Unless someone has a better idea," she said, "I think we should try to haul him up."

No one else volunteered a better plan.

The three grabbed fistfuls of cloth and prepared themselves for the task ahead.

"No... owa... halii!" They pulled as one, with all their might.

Without a doubt, this load was heavy; it was the heaviest burden that Sanja had ever tried to manage. But there was also no doubt that it was also moving.

Ever so slowly, the trio backed up, pulling the trapped passenger back up... back towards the world of the living.

"We're doing it!" Jorga cheered. Sanja shared his joy, but wished the other two were stronger than they were.

The sky continued to brighten and a large lump in the cloth appeared at the very edge of the cliff.

"No... owa... halii!" Jorga called and they all pulled in unison.

"No... owa... halii!" Sanja cried.

Even the Gnome joined in the count, despite not knowing the language.

Then, when it looked like the lump would finally clear the edge, they stopped making progress at all.

"It must be caught!" Sanja yelled as her muscles began to burn.

"You're going to rip it!" Jorga screamed. "Lower him back down, slowly!"

"We can't stop," the girl said. "We'll never get another chance. And the cloth will only be weaker the next time. We have to keep trying and just... hope..."

"Pull!" they yelled over the sound of ripping cloth. "Pull!"

Sanja looked over at the tiny man with the pink beard. His eyes were wild. He had let go of the cloth. "Please don't give up," she begged him in Common. She knew that if Theodore fell over the cliff now, it would be all her fault.

Kazbo put his tiny hands to her forearm. "Take of my spirit, make Goliath form efficacious," he whispered. "Strength of muscle and will, blood, and bile vivacious." The tips of his fingers glowed faintly red.

Sanja's panic was overwhelming. "Please help!" she pleaded with the Gnome.

Her heart was pounding in her chest. Faster, and faster, and faster still. Blood was pounding in her ears. She was clenching her teeth so tightly that she feared they would turn to powder. Jorga was screaming, but she could no longer make out the words over the thumping of her own heart.

Sanja's clothes felt tight and cold sweat dampened every inch of fur on her body. She felt anger, and hatred, and other exciting emotions that were even stranger still. Blood poured from her nostrils and a burning sensation filled her throat. It felt as if the blue torch flame had been lit in her belly.

Sanja's eyes burned with blood and it ran down her face in twin streams. She screamed in agony and rage as unworldly power coursed through her. The sound from her muzzle was so horrifying that Jorga dropped the cloth and backed away in terror.

But the girl didn't let go. Her muscles knotted and strained. Her thick nails dug deeply into her palms through the sheer cloth. She felt as if she could pluck an oak tree from the ground and carry it on her back.

With one slow, never-ending rip, Sanja continued her voyage backward. She pulled the material as effortlessly as if it were just her sleeping mat laying on the grass.

Jorga and Kazbo were swept from their feet by the tide of cloth, and dragged along for the ride.

The ripped cloth went slack, and Sanja collapsed in a heap.

The boy was frozen in his place, but the gnome ran to the girl's side.

"My apologies are the stars in the heavens; and I can never atone," he babbled. "In my hysteria, I've taken terrible risk, for which you cannot condone." He buried his tears in the girl's soft vest, and gripped her the best he could with his tiny arms.

Ever so slowly, Sanja climbed to her hands and knees, took a deep breath, and then threw up.

"Are... are you okay, sis?" Jorga's trembling fingers reached out to touch his sister's furry arm, but stopped just short.

She nodded but said nothing. The burning in her throat was pure agony. The flames were subsiding, but it felt as if she had been eating hot coals from the fire.

"I can't express my relief and the terrible thrill," Kazbo whispered, "to see that you move, and know you breathe still."

She put a primary finger on the tiny man's shoulder. "You did good," she coughed, "but please... don't ever do that again."

The Gnome beamed with pride. He tugged Sanja's water skin from her pack and dragged it to her side.

# # #

They gave her a moment to regain her composure and then Jorga took a step toward the edge of the cliff.

"No, don't!" Sanja barked. "I'll go. You two stay back. If he slips back over the edge, then his weight could pull the cloth and you over with him."

The Tauren girl took out her knife and began to slice a path through the thin material. It was strange, strange stuff, this cloth. Fortunately for her, it seemed to cut easily enough once she got her knife going through it.

She finally reached the trapped man and knelt down beside him. "Be careful," she whispered in Common, "you're still on the edge. Don't struggle."

Sanja slowly cut away the cloth to find a mass of black, leather armor and shiny metal studs. The cloth was snagged in layer after layer around the silver buckles that fastened the man's leather boots. The steel points on his shoulders, knees, and elbows also gripped the cloth tightly.

The man was larger than Elizabeth, and must have towered over the Gnome. He was only a little shorter than Sanja, and even more wiry.

As more and more of the cloth was cut away, she found herself fascinated by his armor. It was well-worn, so he must have seen many battles, but it was only a fraction of the thickness of an average Tauren chest plate. Sanja figured that he must have fought in a very alien style. How else could he have survived with so little protection?

"Thank goodness you found me," the man said in Common as she finished freeing his legs, "I was afraid I'd hang there for the rest of my days."

"You're safe now," she assured him. She cut one of his arms free and rolled him onto his back, away from the cliff.

"Or worse," he sighed, "that I'd be found by a damned Horde..."

Sanja tore the cloth from the man's face and his steel-grey eyes went wide. The words caught in his throat.

"Horde!" he screamed.

# # #

Sanja was so shocked that she fell backwards, onto her butt, in a scramble to get away from the shrieking human.

The man was flailing now, trying to rip away the cloth that held him. His eyes met Kazbo's. "Stop her!" he yelled at the Gnome. "Use your magic before she calls the rest of them to us! Kill her!"

Sanja scrambled away from the man. She didn't try to explain. She just turned around and got to her feet. "Run!" she yelled at Jorga.

The boy took off like a jackrabbit and she was hot on his heels.

Tauren are known for their endurance, and not for their speed. Sanja glanced over her shoulder and was horrified to see that the man must have freed himself. He was sprinting towards her faster than she thought that anyone could possibly run.

Kazbo raced behind him. "She means us no harm!" he shouted.

"Hurry!" Sanja shrieked at her brother.

The Taurens were so focused on the danger behind them that they didn't even notice the danger that was directly in front of them. With a deep _sploosh!_ her brother disappeared from sight.

"Jorga!" she screamed, diving in after him.

The water was shallow, but the two of them were frightfully close to the edge. Sanja grabbed her brother with both hands and hesitated. Did she try to pull him back to the near shore - the shore closest to the homicidal human - or did she risk going over the falls by trying to drag the boy to the far side?

A moment later and the question was moot. They were flying end over end down the side of the cliff.


	3. Chapter 3

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**Chapter 3**

Sanja had watched the falls from the valley floor and idly wondered how long it would take to jump from the top to the bottom. She was not a suicidal person – far from it – but it was the sort of thing that you couldn't help but wonder when looking up at the falls' majesty.

Sometimes a gust of wind would blow a white jet of water away from the rest of the falls and she would count slowly as it fell. "No... owa... halii... jola..." Sometimes she would get all the way to saji before it crashed down on the rocks below.

Sanja didn't get to count to saji on this fall, had she even thought to try it. Instead the two fell into a deep dark pool almost as soon as they had left the cliff top. They bounced off of the pool's rocky bottom (not hard) and immediately popped back up to the surface.

Without a hesitation – this time – the pair splashed over to the edge of the pool and up on some slippery rocks. It had been dim out on the plateau, but it was pitch black here.

"You're hurting my arm!" Jorga yelled. The falls were so loud that she could just hear his voice over them.

"I'm sorry," she yelled back. She eased up on the death-grip she held on his arm, but she didn't let him go.

"Where are we?"

"I don't know. Some sort of cave, I guess."

"What do we do?" her brother yelled. He sounded very scared. She couldn't blame him. She was scared too.

Sanja thought for a long while. "We wait. The sun will be up soon. When it shines some light down in here, we'll be able to come up with a plan."

"I'm cold!" the boy whined.

She put her arm around her brother and rested her cheek on the top of his furry head.

She was cold too, but happy to be alive.

# # #

After what seemed like an eternity, the sun did rise and it cast a bit of light around their environment. They didn't appear to be in a cave at all, but instead a notch in the top of the cliff face. Water cascaded off of the plateau above and fell perhaps only fifteen or twenty feet before splashing into the pool before them.

This pool then overflowed into the falls that tumbled down the rest of the cliff's face.

Sanja supposed it was possible that the water fell into a second pool before beginning its final descent down the cliff – you certainly couldn't see such tiny details from the valley floor – but there was no way she was going to try and get a closer look.

The "notch" was about fifteen yards wide and extended perhaps twenty-five yards deep back from the cliff face. The walls were stone, but worn smooth by centuries of flowing water. Everything was smooth, wet, and coated with slick layer mud.

Sanja craned her neck and looked around as much as possible without standing up. She couldn't see anything that looked like a good way out. There was a crack here or there that might provide a good handhold, but there was too much bare rock above or below each to afford climbing out.

The waterfall blocked most of her view. She tried to get to her hooves, but her brother clung to her arm. "Don't go!"

"I'm not going anywhere," she promised him.

# # #

The sun rose a bit more and cast its warm rays on them. Ever so slowly, the light worked its way around, eventually illuminating the entire notch.

There on the opposite side of the pool, a miserable-looking mass of black leather and metal studs sat perched on a rock. Theodore looked like drowned rat, and the sopping-wet Gnome beside him looked little better.

The man glared at the children, but despite the hatred in his eyes, he seemed content to sit on his side of the pool.

The two groups stared at each other for perhaps half an hour.

"This is getting us nowhere," Sanja finally said. She brushed aside her brother's hands and stood up. She surveyed the rock wall above her and then carefully eased her way out into the pool to get a better look at the walls on the other side of the falls.

She took her time and moved slowly. Theodore glared at her the entire time. When her exploration brought her nearer to him, she put her open hands up to indicate a lack of malicious intent.

She did not speak to either of them.

Sanja eventually returned to her brother and pointed above his head. "There's a hole or a cave or something up there. I think that's our best chance of escape."

# # #

Sanja tried to climb towards the cave entrance, but it was no use. If she stood on the highest edge and stretched out as far as she could, she could just touch the outer lip. Unfortunately, the rock was smooth enough that there was nothing to grab on to.

They were trapped.

Sanja turned around to see Theodore standing by her side. His face was thin and was accented by sharp angles at his cheeks, chin, and nose. His hair was light brown and flecked with grey. It was cut very short, and accented his bony temples. He didn't say a word, but he was surveying the wall also.

Instead of climbing up towards the hole, the rogue approached a nearly vertical crack. He put both of his hands in the crack and grabbed onto one of the edges. Then he put his feet in the crack and wedged them against the opposite edge.

With no apparent effort, the man shimmied up the crack as if he were a squirrel on a tree. Soon, Theodore was over Sanja's head and had reached a horizontal crack that led towards the cave. He put both hands in the horizontal crack and let his feet dangle. He walked, hand over hand along the length of the crack.

Sanja realized she was staring in awe.

"He's... not going to leave us here," Jorga said. "Is he?"

Theodore looked down at the Tauren, his expression unreadable. He looked to Sanja and back to the boy before returning to his task. He did not reply.

As the cave drew closer, Theodore crossed his left hand over his right and dug in to the very end of the crack with his strange little fingers. How such spindly little things could hold a grown man aloft was a mystery to the Taurens.

The rogue dropped his right hand and positioned his feet on tiny bulges on the otherwise smooth rock face. Then with a sudden burst of energy, he swung his arm wide and made a reach for the side of the hole.

Theodore did succeed in reaching the opening, but the entrance was smooth and he was no more successful than Sanja had been at holding on.

The rogue groaned and slid slowly down the rock face. He rested his cheek again the wall for a moment. "Damn." Turning to look at Sanja, he said, "It looks like I'm going to need a hand to get us out of here."

He looked silly with one muddy cheek and mud in his shortly-cropped goatee. But Sanja was not amused. She was pissed. "Get us out of here? You're the one who got us into this mess!" She shouted in his face. She poked his chest with her primary finger to emphasize the point. "You told Kazbo to kill me!"

"Well I apologize, Bessy! I've been fighting the Horde for ages," he explained. "I certainly didn't anticipate being rescued by one."

"And how do you plan to get us out?

"Easy. Give me a boost to the cave, I'll climb up to the surface and make a rope out of the balloon scraps." He grinned and fixed her with his steel grey eyes. "Unless you think you're a better candidate to climb to the surface?"

Sanja frowned. It was obvious that he was far better at climbing than she was. And it was just as obvious that she needed help from someone. "How do I know that you'll come back for us?"

"Have to," Theodore explained. "I have to get that pink-haired engineer to Nijel's Point to prevent a disaster. It's taken me two months to get him this far. I'd have to be crazy to leave without him!"

Sanja took a deep breath and then nodded her head. She cupped her hands together and bent over slightly. With a little toss, she easily boosted the leather-armored figure up to the cave.

The rogue scrambled effortlessly into the darkness, like a cockroach.

"Can you see a way up?" she yelled over the rushing water.

She waited to see him peek back out of the hole.

And waited.

And waited.

Jorga and Kazbo stepped over beside her. "He's a horrible man," Sanja said to the Gnome. "How could you stand to travel with him all this time?"

Kazbo looked puzzled. "Of what do you speak, I must implore? He only hired me, just the day before!"

The Tauren girl wanted to beat her head against the stone wall. This couldn't be happening.

# # #

"How good are you at climbing trees?"

The boy shrugged. Tauren are not, as a rule, tree-climbers, but boys will be boys, regardless of race.

She knelt before him and put her hands on his shoulders. "You're going to have to climb up me," she explained. "I'll lean against the wall and you just pretend I'm a tree."

"And then what?"

"Then... work your way to the surface. Get back up on the plateau."

"No! I'm not going to leave you here!" he screamed. "I won't go without you!"

"Kazbo will go with you. There's plenty of stuff from the balloon to make a rope. You tie it off to something sturdy, like a boulder, and you lower it down."

"No!"

"If for some reason you can't, like there's no safe place to tie it off, then you climb back down the mountain."

The poor kid was holding his sister and crying his eyes out.

"Get Mom and Dad. Have them bring a rope. Listen to me, you little twerp! I'll be cold and miserable, but I'll be fine. Can you do that?"

The boy wiped his eyes and nodded.

"I'm counting on you."

# # #

Getting the boys up into the cave was a lot easier than she had anticipated. Jorga was heavier than Kazbo, but he was taller too. Sanja practically threw the Gnome up the wall.

"We'll be right back. I promise!"

"Just go!" she yelled at them.

When the Tauren boy's head finally ducked back into the cave, she sat down on the rock and wrapped her hands around her arms to conserve warmth. She felt naked without her knife, but the boys would need it a lot more up there than she would down here.

They were back only moments later.

"So does the tunnel lead up?"

"Yeah, it does," Jorga called, "but we're not tall enough to climb out. You have to come help us!"

Sanja growled and drove her palms into her eyes. "I can't reach."

"Give me your hands. I'll help!"

She stretched out as far as she could and the boy grabbed her wrists.

"Stop! Stop!" he yelled after a moment of trying to help her climb up. "I'm too far forward. Even with Kazbo holding my legs, you're going to pull me down!"

Sanja sat back down and rested her chin on her palm.

She thought for a long while and then, resolute, she stood back up. "Okay, um... don't look, okay?"

"What?"

But Sanja was already stripping off her trousers – and removing wet leather is no easy task. She twisted the pants into a rope-like shape and slapped it up into the entrance of the cave. "Scoot back as far as you can go and hold on tight!"

The leather "rope" was short, but better than nothing. With just a few attempts, Sanja was able to get far enough in that she could get a solid handhold.

With a grunt of exertion, she found herself in a dark chamber that was very, very wet. A torrent of water was pouring in from somewhere overhead and the constant splashing echoed off of every slippery, muddy wall.

"Where did Theodore go?" she shouted.

Kazbo's hands lit with blue light and illuminated the cramped space. Sanja covered herself with her wet pants and Kazbo's face blushed red. He turned around and the girl sat down to get dressed.

There were only three exits that Sanja could see. There was the hole they came in, a passage that lead up – through which a small river of water poured in – and a dark passage down which drained the water out.

Sanja didn't give the passage down much thought. It was the passage up, back up to the plateau that she was focused on. The walls were smooth and slippery, and water was nearly overwhelming. She could see why Jorga had not managed to climb it, even with Kazbo's help.

She slid her knife back into its leather sheath. She braced her back against one wall and dug her small hooves into the slippery wall opposite. With her palms against the wall behind her, she inched herself slowly up.

The going was hard, but she made steady progress – for the first couple feet. But soon the water was hitting her square in the face. It wasn't just the force of the water against her, pushing her down. It was the cold. It was the sputtering for air.

Sanja fell back down to the bottom and the boys helped catch her and keep her from falling into the tunnel that lead farther down.

"Are you okay?" her brother shouted.

Sanja nodded. "There's a lot of water. It's going to be hard to make it past. Perhaps the two of you could help push me up?"

Kazbo grinned and winked. "If I can block the water that does funnel, then you'll extract us from this tunnel!"

Sanja looked to her brother's muddy face and then back to the Gnome, but Kazbo was already making complex gestures with his tiny hands.

"Wild river, flowing stream, or babbling brook; water in each and every form you took." He hopped in place as she shouted. "I command you to stop your assault! Stay, terminate, freeze, and halt!"

For a moment, nothing happened. And then there was silence. The unending assault on their ears shut off so suddenly that all three felt dizzy from the change.

"Wow! How did he do that?" Jorga gasped.

Sanja looked around. The water had indeed stopped, but it did not go away. It was frozen in place. Every inch, every surface, every glob of mud glistened with a layer of magical ice.

"Why did you have to say 'freeze'?" Sanja whispered.

Kazbo seemed perplexed. "Interesting."

Sanja shifted her weight slightly and suddenly her hooves flew out from under her. She flailed wildly; trying desperately to grab on to any surface that was not slippery.

Then the three were sliding; sliding down the ice-coated tunnel at incredible speeds.


	4. Chapter 4

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 4**

Time slowed and they continued to slide helplessly down the icy passage for what seemed like hours. Each bump along the way found a knee, or an elbow, or a forehead. They screamed in unison until their voices grew hoarse.

Then they erupted from the tunnel into bright daylight, and skidded to a stop down a hillside of small, grey stones.

"Ow," Jorga moaned.

Ow, indeed. "Are you okay, kiddo?" Sanja whispered.

"I feel like I was trampled by herd of kodos," he groaned.

She felt much the same. She closed her eyes and rested her head for a while before trying to stand up. They had been so wet, so soaked to the bone, that the summer sun was a blessed relief.

"Where are we?" her brother said.

Sanja sat slowly up and got her bearings. Something didn't smell right, but her nose was still bleeding from rough trip down. She figured that had thrown off her sense of smell.

The tunnel had been some sort of water channel from the stream at the top of the plateau down through the mountain and out towards the valley floor. In fact, they had fallen so far that they were almost at the bottom now.

But where there should have been lush, green fields; there were none. The land was grey and barren for as far as the eye could see. Scraggly scrub were the only signs of life.

The valley was rocky and desolate. This was no prairie. They had emerged into the desert somehow.

"No!" she gasped. "We can't be in Desolace."

Sanja climbed to her knees and looked back up the mountain; back at the knife-edge peaks of the Thunderhorn mountain range. The tunnel had led them through the mountain, not just down it.

They were on the wrong side! The wrong side of a mountain range that had sheltered Mulgore for aeons. Mountains which were just as impenetrable as they were breathtaking.

She scrabbled a few yards up the gravel slope in disbelief. "No." She looked to the left and to the right for any sign of a path or a pass, but there were none. "How are we...?"

# # #

Behind her, Sanja heard an unfamiliar moan. She snapped her head around to see Theodore climb to his feet. He looked pretty rough. He must have been in the descending tunnel when the trio came barreling down behind him.

He saw her and looked away. As if nothing had happened, he started walking casually down the slope toward the valley floor.

Although a wiser Tauren would have let him go, the flames in Sanja's head would not allow it. She had never been as angry as she was now. She charged at his back and shoved him down the slope with both hands. "Néchi!" she yelled at him.

Theodore tumbled down the slope and rolled easily to his feet, facing the girl.

Shoving him had felt good, but it had done little to put out the fire. She had never raised her knife in anger before, but she definitely wanted to now. She glanced down at her hip. The sheath was still there, strapped to her belt, but the handle had been broken away from the blade at some point in their fall.

Seeing that she was no threat, the rogue turned and walked away; but she chased after him. "You lied to us! You said you were going to help get us out, and then you left us to die!"

The man glanced over his shoulder. "I don't owe you anything."

Sanja felt like her head would burst. "You don't owe us? I saved your life!" she shouted. "I could have left you there on that cliff to be eaten by bugs and carrion birds. Why would you say such a thing? Why wouldn't you help us?"

"Why?" He snapped his head around. "Because you're Horde scum, that's why. Even if it would have been the end of this cursed existence, I didn't ask for your help. I owe you nothing!" he screamed.

Sanja was stunned beyond words. She had always lived a sheltered life; a life some would call "idyllic". Oh sure, she had known people that she didn't like; petty people, mean people. But never before had she ever encountered someone that she would call evil.

She wanted to walk away from this horrible man, but she was worried for herself, and for her brother. She started to doubt that he could really be as bad as she feared. "Let's forget about the past. Okay?"

She gave him the nicest smile that she could manage. "Would you mind, at least leading us to a Horde-controlled town?" She tried not to sound desperate, but it was hard to keep it from her voice. "Anywhere that we could get some help getting back home?

"A Horde-controlled town?" he barked a laugh. "In eastern Desolace? Are you mad?"

"I am not mad!" she shouted. She searched her memories of the tales that Elizabeth had shared. "I've heard stories of an outpost... Ghost... Point?"

"Ghost Walker Post?" Theodore looked around and grinned as if she had told a joke. "Ghost Walker Post has fallen! The very spire it was built on crumbled to the valley floor." He made a gesture with his arm to mock the tragedy of it falling.

"The Night Elves control all of central Desolace now," he sneered. "Long live the Alliance!"

Why was she still talking to this man? "There must be... Look, I know you don't want to help us, even though we've never done you any harm, but there must be something... some assistance you could offer us... something?"

She put her ears back up and straightened her back. She had been taught her entire life to treat others with respect, but she would not be submissive to this man.

"Assist you?" He grinned and his grey eyes narrowed to slits. "You bet. Directly south of here are the warlocks of Shok'thokar. You can head down there..." he crossed his arms, "if you'd like them to peel all of your skin off, and then sacrifice you to their demon lords."

Sanja felt the weight of the world crushing down on her. Not because of this vermin of a man, but because it was her responsibility to take care of her little brother. How was she supposed to do that here? She was no warrior, no tracker. She had precious few supplies, no map, no directions...

"No?" he asked with a snide tone. "Well, there is a large road that runs across Desolace. I'm headed there now. From here, I'd guess that it's a four day walk... straight across Magram territory."

Icicles shot down Sanja's back. "Magram territory? We're in Magram territory?"

He was grinning again. "It sure is, as far as the eye can see."

"Who are the Magram?" a squeaky voice beside her asked. She turned to look at Kazbo. He looked muddy, but largely unscathed from their slide.

"Centaurs..." she explained in a low voice. "The Tauren and Centaurs have been mortal enemies since the world was first formed."

"Aw, don't cry," the rogue mocked. She hadn't been, but the jab still stung. She was definitely scared for their safety. "Hey, I'm headed to Nijel's Point. You're more than welcome to come with me."

She stared daggers at Theodore, but didn't trust her voice.

"I'll be glad to escort you all the way there... and then sell you into slavery. You can live out the rest of your days toiling in the fields, and growing the crops that will feed Alliance soldiers."

She could feel the blood pounding in her ears. She tried to relax her hands, but they remained fists.

"You will sleep comfortably on dirt floors, knowing that your sweat and blood are helping... helping to crush your own people."

"You... you..." she stammered.

"Don't bother bringing the boy, though. Most slave traders won't buy Tauren bulls. They're too big and unpredictable." Another evil grin. "Although he is still quite young... If you were to beg me, I might be willing to castrate him. The slavers might be willing to take a Tauren steer."

"Enough!" she shouted as her fist connected with his chin.

Theodore was knocked back a few feet. He didn't look particularly hurt, but he did seem pleased with himself that he could push her to violence. He sneered and walked off without looking back.

Sanja sank to her knees and then to her side. Despite how she fought them, the tears began to flow.

Jorga sat down beside her and stroked her mane. He looked very brave for such a young kid.

Kazbo sat down in front of her and gave her an encouraging smile.

"Why are you still here?" she snapped at him. "Go! Go help your Alliance friend!"

"Kazbo is no friend of that buffoon. Just sold him a ride on my balloon." He put his tiny hand on top of hers. "Though I saw how you treated him; both fair and just. I will get you home somehow; even walk if we must."

She managed a sincere smile. "Thank you, Kazbo."

"What should we do?" Jorga whispered.

Sanja thought for a moment before standing and dusting herself off. "I think we should follow him. If he's headed toward a road, then that's where we need to be also. Perhaps we'll find other people there who would be more willing to help."

# # #

Sanja refilled her water skin and the trio set off to the West, following in Theodore's footprints. She tried to walk slowly and the Gnome tried to hurry. They fell far behind the rogue and it was clear that Kazbo would wear himself out early. He was neither fit nor accustomed to exerting himself. Plus, he had to take three steps for every one of hers.

"Walking..." the Gnome grunted. "This is quite a chore."

Sanja tried to give him an encouraging smile. _No more rhymes for me, little man?_ she wondered.

He worked to catch his breath. "Popular activity?" he asked, "In Mulgore?"

Sanja chuckled to herself. "I suppose you could say so. My people are nomads. We follow the kodo north in the summer and then south again in the winter. Every few months, we pack up the entire village and take it for a walk.

"Even when we're not roaming, we have to track our game, and search for roots and berries," she explained. "I suppose we spend more time walking than almost anything else we do."

Kazbo shook his head and muttered to himself, but he did look determined. "I know that I can do this; Kazbo can roam. Been walking since I was just a little Gnome."

Sanja raised an eyebrow and stared down at the little man wordlessly.

"Okay, littl_**er**_," he clarified with a blush. "Although you might think me pompous," he gestured along the length of his small body in a grandiose way, "I didn't always tower over Desolace."

Sanja couldn't help but laugh out loud. She slapped her thigh and gave the Gnome a genuine smile.

"I'm readying myself for a shock..." he said. "Any guess how long a walk...?"

Sanja shook her head. "I've never been to Desolace before."

"But you live nearby, nonetheless! Surely you could take a guess..."

Sanja frowned and kicked a stone with her hoof. "Well, I do have a friend who walked across Desolace last spring. Elizabeth was slave to an Orc who had traveled from Camp Mojache."

She took a deep breath and tried to remember every detail that Elizabeth had shared. She knew that any little fact might turn out to be critical. "Elizabeth said that they camped near the road, but for a few nights, that they could hear the screams from the demon city of Shok'thokar."

Sanja shuddered uncontrollably. "She said that they started as soon as the sun went down and that they continued until morning without pause." Despite the desert heat, she hugged her arms close for comfort. "They had to start sleeping during the day, since there was no way to get rest at night."

Kazbo gulped audibly, but said nothing.

"If Theodore was right, and Shok'thokar is just south of here, then that would be a good guide of how long it took them to reach our village."

"So we'll add on the four days to reach the road," he said cheerfully. "How many more from Shok'thokar did she strode?"

Sanja winced. "There is no pass through the Thunderhorn mountain range. They had to travel north, all the way to the Stonetalon Mountains; and then down through the Stonetalon pass to enter Mulgore."

"So it was a long expedition, when it came to its fruition?"

She nodded. "It took them three months to make it to my village," she noticed how he missed a step, "and I hope you'll take no offense, but she walked faster than you... and my brother as well."

"You can be at ease," he reassured Sanja, "her legs were longer than these?"

With a smile, "Yes, Kazbo, they were. But unfortunately, that's not the worst of it."

"No?" he squeaked.

"I figure that if they were here in the spring, then they probably hit the pass in the middle of the summer." He didn't show any sign that he understood, so she continued. "But it's already past the middle of summer now. Even if the two of you push yourselves hard, it seems unlikely that we can get through the pass... before it fills with snow."

Kazbo stopped short and put his hands over his mouth.

"I'm afraid so," Sanja said. "Unless you can conjure up some sort of miracle, then it's liable to be a whole year before Jorga and I see our family again."

The color had drained from the little Gnome's face. It was as if he had turned into a pink-bearded stone.

"Are you sure that you still want to come with us?"

With a worrisome pause, Kazbo said, "I won't rest until you're happy; safe and back with your family."

Jorga couldn't take being left out any longer. "What are you telling him?" he finally interrupted.

Sanja put her hand on his head and tousled his mane. He pulled away, indignant, and she couldn't suppress a grin. "I said that this could be a very long walk and that we're going to be together for a long time... Perhaps you could teach Kazbo some of our words, and he can teach you some of his?"

"That's a great idea, sis! Hey, Kazbo, Kazbo!" he shouted. "'Horns'... These are my horns."

"Horns," the Gnome repeated.

Sanja chuckled and shook her head. _What is it with boys?_ she wondered. _They're always so obsessed with their horns!_


	5. Chapter 5

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 5**

Sanja was surprised to see Kazbo's determination. He wasn't looking so well by nightfall, but he was still struggling to make good time.

"There's not going to be a lot of game in this desert." She shrugged. "Rabbits, snakes, mice... but I don't like the idea of stopping to hunt here. We need to get out of Magram territory as soon as possible."

Kazbo nodded silently. Jorga had spent the entire day teaching him words and he had responded in kind all morning. But by mid-afternoon, he had grown so weary that it took all his focus just to put one foot in front of the other.

Sanja felt compelled to voice her thoughts out loud whenever the boys went quiet. There was just something ominous about walking in silence. A feeling of doom, perhaps? When she voiced her thoughts, it felt like they had a better plan then they really did.

"Some of these plants should be good to eat, but we'll have to burn off the spines. When we make camp, we can collect some up."

"Not that we have berries, roots, or even meat," Kazbo suddenly piped up, "but are you certain that cactus is safe to eat?"

"It should be fine," she reassured him. "Plants grow spines to keep animals from eating them. Poisonous plants don't have to do that."

"I'm hungry," Jorga whined.

"I know." She put a hand on his back. "I doubt dinner will be particularly tasty either, but I don't think there's much we can do about it. Don't worry. Once we get to the road, we can take our time, and look for game as we go."

# # #

Kazbo looked like he would drop at any moment, so Sanja started looking for a place to camp. It was already dark, and the temperature had dropped.

When they cleared a small rise, the trio was surprised to see a small campfire directly ahead of them. Theodore was cooking something that smelled delicious.

He was the last person on Azeroth that Sanja wanted to see, but there was no point in trying to avoid him now. Unless they wanted to carry Kazbo, they might as well stop.

"So you've decided to come with me to Nijel's Point, eh?" Theodore sneered. "Good! I could use the silver."

"Did you hear something, Kazbo?" Sanja held a hand to her ear and looked around. "No? Well, I suppose it was just the wind."

Kazbo didn't laugh. He laid down in front of the fire and closed his eyes. She doubted he would be awake much longer.

The rogue approached Sanja and put his face directly in hers. His grey eyes sparkled in the firelight. "I should slit your throats while you sleep," he muttered.

"Did we do something to make you hate us?" she asked. "Did my people wrong you somehow? Is that why you are so cruel to us?"

Theodore ground his teeth while picking his words. "I'm cruel to you because you're a half-breed abomination. The man in me wants to put your head on a spike. But the smell of you..." He leaned in close and took a deep breath. "The smell is driving the beast in me wild."

The rogue looked a little crazed. He took a step closer and she took one back.

"To him," Theodore whispered, "you smell a little like a woman and a little like a cow. Those are two things the beast really likes... for two very different reasons."

Theodore had been brutish since she had met him, but until this point, all his words had seemed hollow. Sure, Sanja feared becoming a slave, but she figured this talk was mostly bluster on the rogue's part.

How far away was Nijel's Point? She doubted it was close. If he intended to drag her there by force, then she would make sure it was the longest walk in his life!

But there was something in his manner, now. Something far darker than she had seen previously.

"Do you know what a cow is, Sanja?" He waited a moment for her to respond. "No? We have many of them back in Gilneas – fields full of cows." He licked his lips and she was torn between the desires to fight or flee. "They look like Tauren do, but they walk on four legs."

Theodore smiled and showed too many teeth. "We use their skin to make our shoes. We turn their milk into cheese. And their meat..." He took deep whiff of her and released it into a satisfied sigh. "Oh, how I wish that I were rich enough to have it for every meal!"

"You don't scare me," she said, but it was a half-truth at best. If he didn't scare her, then he sure did worry her.

"Oh no?" Theodore looked sly. He held one hand in front of her face and despite her efforts to keep staring in his eyes, she couldn't resist looking at the curious appendage. Instead of two strong fingers, he had four spindly, little things. They looked a little like pink twigs.

But now, they seemed a little different than they had before. They seemed longer, and darker. And the nails that had been thin, transparent chips before, now seemed dark and thicker, and even more pointed as well.

"What sort of evil..." she gasped. His hand was furry now, and not sleek like her own, but shaggy. His fingers had grown long and each was tipped with a knife blade of a claw.

He held his other hand up and it transformed as well. She looked from his hands back to his eyes, but they too had changed. Grey had been replaced with yellow. They even seemed to shine a bit in the dark.

Theodore lunged forward and Sanja leapt back – barely avoiding the glistening, ivory fangs that banged shut where her muzzle had been only moments earlier.

Suddenly, Sanja was laying on her back and the beast's full weight was upon her. It looked like a wolf, but it like a man as well. She blinked to clear her vision, but the sight did not change. The beast was wearing Theodore's armor, despite him being a good foot taller and many pounds heavier than he had been moments prior.

The Tauren had seen magic before. The druids in their tribe could change into animals – but not monsters! Whatever dark magic was at work here was something she wanted no part of.

Sanja struggled to free herself, but there was little point. The beast was stronger, heavier, and had the advantage of surprise. He had already pinned both her arms and legs to the desert floor.

Jorga was at her side, pushing and kicking at the creature. He yelled in Taurahe, but Theodore ignored him.

Kazbo was awake and standing. He looked nervously between the two and fidgeted in place, clearly unsure what he should do.

The beast explored Sanja's neck with its nose and drank in her scent. He snuffled farther down until he was sticking his nose inside of her vest.

She was very thankful that she had left her top buttoned, despite the desert heat. There wasn't much to see, even when she wasn't wearing it, but she had become increasingly self-conscious lately, as her chest had started to grow. The boys looked at her differently these days, and it made her a little uncomfortable.

"Delicious!" he said in a raspy growl.

The Worgen put his muzzle back up to Sanja's ear. "If I don't scare you," he whispered, "then you are very stupid, stupid girl."

Sanja ground her teeth in fury. "Get off of me this instant," she growled.

The beast put his ears to the side and showed his teeth without a sound. A long tendril of drool dripped from his lips in what she could only presume was a wolfy grin.

The beast sat his full weight on her for another long moment before hopping away and returning to the rock she had seen Theodore sitting on originally.

By the time she was back on her feet, the rogue looked human once more.

Sanja wrinkled her nose. She could still smell the beast on her fur. He stunk in a way that no ordinary wolf did.

Without a word, Theodore began to dine on the rabbit he had roasted. No one asked him to share and he did not offer it.

When he had eaten his fill, he tossed the carcass in the fire and watched it burn.

# # #

In an awkward silence, the trio ate a small meal of bitter karras root and roasted cactus. The cactus tasted... "green" was probably the best word for it. It was marginally better than not eating at all. It didn't taste badly, but there was just nothing good about it.

Kazbo slept like a rock, but Sanja tossed and turned. She awoke constantly and glanced to where the rogue laid, only momentarily reassured that he was not coming to get her.

She tossed dry wood on the fire throughout the night and huddled close to her kid brother to stay warm. Despite the heat of the day, the night was bitterly cold and her small vest was not enough to keep her warm.

The rogue left camp without a word before Sanja woke. She let the boys sleep a while more, but as the land brightened, she could delay no longer. They needed to leave Magram land.

The Gnome woke like a lizard on cold morning. He grumbled a lot without saying anything that Sanja could actually translate, and he tried to get up several times before actually succeeding.

Sanja dug through her bag and was pleased to find a blackroot that she had dug out of the prairie soil. She broke off what she judged to be a Gnome-sized portion and handed it to Kazbo. "Chew this as you walk, but don't swallow it."

He eyed the hairy root suspiciously, and with evident distaste, he finally put it in his mouth. He spit it back in his hand so quickly that she was reminded of a rattlesnake striking at a target.

"Yes, it's very bitter," she chuckled. "You'll gain a taste for it eventually. And you're going to need the lift."

She threw her pack around her shoulders and started walking. "Our hunters chew blackroot when they chase an injured animal. We say that that's the price you pay for missing your mark, when you throw a spear. Depending on the beast and the injury, sometimes game can make it a very long way before they drop from exhaustion or blood loss."

"Had I planned my journey for a year, or a hundred," the little man grumbled. "I would not be prepared for an adventure so rugged."

Sanja looked around. She couldn't quite fathom what had been so harsh. The winter would be bad, she knew that. Walking in snow was hard on your hooves, and the cold was impossible to shake. But that was months away.

Jorga gave her a quizzical look.

"I think Kazbo is worried that he isn't strong enough to make this journey."

Jorga scratched his mane. "Really? Don't his people ever travel? Ask him what his village is like."

The boy had not learned many words of Common, so Sanja acted as a translator. But even with all she had been taught, she had to stop the Gnome multiple times. Kazbo loved to use words that meant nothing to the girl.

"He says that his people live... underground?"

"Like rabbits?" the boy asked. "Well, he's small like a rabbit. Perhaps they just hide underground when predators are around? That's what rabbits do."

"No, I think he's saying that his entire village is underground," Sanja said. "I think they live their entire lives inside a mountain, like in a cave, perhaps."

"That doesn't make any sense!" Jorga put his hands up in frustration. "How could you put a whole village inside a cave? Where would they all sit? And what would they eat? Where do they poop?"

Sanja sighed. _Boys._ She appreciated that the experience was forcing her to learn new words, but playing translator between the two was proving quite tiresome.

"I have no idea where they _poop_," she said. "If you want to know that, then you're going to need to learn more Common."

Jorga kicked a rock in frustration and Sanja listened as the little man described Gnomeregan.

"I don't understand many of these words. I think he said that it's his job to make things for his village? Or perhaps to protect something?"

"He's a sentry?" Jorga seemed skeptical. Back in Mulgore, their village had several sentries, and without exception, the sentries were a very tough bunch. They wore the heaviest armor, carried the biggest weapons, and they were absolutely fearless. If anyone ever seemed un-sentry-like, it had to be Kazbo.

"I'm sorry," she said in Common, "I just don't understand what it is you protect. Is that a person? Or a place? What is a 'tome'?"

"I speak of books and scrolls, you see. That is the realm of a librarian trustee," he squeaked. "Repositories of knowledge, history, and the arcane. References perhaps obtuse, but hopefully germane."

"Books," she repeated for her brother. "He protects 'books'."

Jorga shrugged. "Perhaps books are very small, like eggs." He cupped his hands, and pretended to be gentle. "And if he doesn't protect them. Bam!" He smashed the invisible eggs and mimed them splattering everywhere. "He could do that."

She frowned and looked between the two. Sanja was tired of asking him the same questions over and over, but now her curiosity was getting the better of her.

"You must think I'm very stupid, but Elizabeth never taught me these words. I can't explain to my brother because I don't know which Taurahe word goes with 'books'."

Kazbo shook his head. "My failure to explain does not make you dumb. Tell me if you will, where Tauren keep their wisdom."

Ah, finally a question that she could understand. "Well, in our spleens, of course," she explained.

Sanja was perfectly serious. Tauren legend held that all the powerful emotions were stored in the body's major organs. The heart held a Tauren's love for his tribe, his brain held his intelligence, grief lived in the lungs, joy in the kidneys, will in the liver, and wisdom in the spleen. Everyone knew that.

Now it was Kazbo's turn to be confused. He had heard of the spleen, but certainly didn't recognize the Taurahe word for it.

Sanja gestured to her side. "The spleen. Wisdom is in the spleen."

Kazbo stared at her for a moment, trying to determine if she was telling a joke, before eventually dismissing the entire idea. She seemed quite serious and it was hard enough to deal with her broken Common. For her to deliver a joke deadpan seemed quite a stretch.

"Your teachers, and to the knowledge that they lead; what resources do they use, what is it you read?"

Read? It was yet another one of those strange words that meant nothing to her. "We learn wise things at night," she explained. "We sit around the campfire and the elders sing us stories of the past. They tell us of the mistakes that great people have made, so that we won't make the same mistakes in the future."

She gestured at her side once more. "Then we keep that wisdom in our spleens."

He waved his hands in frustration, clearly uninterested in the spleen – despite his earlier curiosity.

"The elders read you stories about the past." He put his palms together and then slowly peeled his thumbs away from one another, like a clam opening up and revealing the tasty meat inside. "That brings us back to the books, at last!"

She stared at his hands and he shook them in place.

She shrugged, losing hope that she would ever understand.

Kazbo made a frustrated noise. He looked about and lead the other two to a flat patch of ground where the sandy soil was largely undisturbed. Grabbing a stick, he began to draw strange symbols in the sand.

The Tauren watched in silence as the Gnome created a long row of simple symbols. He drew circles, squares, triangles, lines that crossed, lines that didn't cross... It seemed very abstract to both Sanja and her brother.

He handed the twig to the girl and gestured to the ground.

She looked to Jorga and then back at the sand. Sanja drew a couple of circles to represent eyes, a few lines as a muzzle. She scribbled in some hair.

She gave the twig to Jorga so he could draw the horns.

"Suddenly I'm at a loss for both reference or adage," the Gnome gasped. "Could it be that you lack a written language?"

The Tauren never created a written language of their own. Those Tauren that left Mulgore and interacted with the other people of the Horde quickly learned that writing exists, and a few even learned how to read Orcish.

But those that wandered the prairie with the seasons had little need for reading and writing. Orcs that come to Tauren villages with orders of conscription were told that "Anything worth telling someone is worth saying in person."

Kazbo was silent for a good hour while he digested that thought.


	6. Chapter 6

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 6**

Jorga was picking up Common quickly, but Kazbo absorbed Taurahe like a new-born calf. They never had to teach him a word twice and he picked up phrases that they had not even explained.

But despite all his linguistic skills, both Sanja and Jorga could not help giggling whenever the Gnome said the word "Tauren". It was supposed to be boomed from the bottom of the speaker's hooves, and said with a rumble. There was just something disjointed about hearing "Tauren" squeaked like a mouse.

"I'm really impressed," Sanja said, "with how quickly you are learning our language."

"Thank you," the Gnome grumbled.

She bent over as she walked and put a hand to his back. "I would think you'd be proud, but you seem..." She cocked her head sideways. "Is something upsetting you? Apart from walking, I mean?"

"Very funny," he squeaked in Taurahe. "I am fine."

"So then why the sad face?"

Kazbo sighed and seemed to search for the right words. "I do not like Taurahe."

"You don't?" Jorga said. "Do you think it's difficult?"

"No, it is easy. But I hate it." He crossed his arms and walked in silence for a while. "Speaking Taurahe words is like..." He made little fists and looked from one of the siblings to the other. "It is like biting your ears."

They put their hands over their ears in unison. "It's like you're biting my ears?" Jorga gasped.

"How do you mean?" he sister added.

Kazbo squeaked in frustration and his face turned slightly more pink. "I do not know many Taurahe words. I can not make words... line up."

"'Line up?' You mean that you can't make rhymes?" Sanja asked.

"Yes, that is it." He seemed a little relieved to get the thought conveyed. "I do not know Taurahe words to make rhymes."

The Taurens sighed in relief.

"Oh, I see what you mean. I never really understood why you bother to do that anyhow," Sanja said. "What's the point? Why do you even try to speak in rhymes?"

Kazbo seemed annoyed once more. Not angry at his fellow travelers, but frustrated with his inability to communicate his thoughts. "That is how Gnomes talk. Babies speak without rhymes. Without rhymes, it is not words." He flailed in frustration. "Is biting ears."

Sanja and Jorga shared an irritated look.

"I make you angry?" the little man squeaked.

"A little, yeah," Sanja gruffed. She fixed the Gnome with a knitted brow while her brother stomped ahead in silence. "It sounds like you think that my people are just stupid barbarians because we don't play idiotic games when we talk!"

She put her fists on her slender hips and came to a complete stop. Kazbo knew that she was serious, since the pair only stopped walking when the Gnome needed to rest.

"Well, I'm sorry if you think that," she fumed. "Perhaps we just have more important things to do than to see who can make up better rhymes."

"I am sorry. Not mean to make you angry," Kazbo apologized. "Not think Gnomes better than Tauren because of rhymes. Only Gnomes talk in rhymes. Do not..." He made a tiny growling sound. "Not have word... Do not need people to talk like Gnomes."

Kazbo started walking again and gestured for his two friends to come with him. "At home," he asked Sanja, "you make food?"

The girl set her jaw for a moment before deciding to answer. "Do I cook? Yeah, sure, sometimes. I like to cook."

The little man gestured at the desert plants around them. "You cook cactus at home?"

"Cactus?" she gasped. "No, we cooked cactus last night because we didn't have anything else to eat. It wasn't really even really cooking. I just burned the spines off of the cactus so we wouldn't get them stuck in our lips."

Sanja thought about her village, her utankan, and smiled. "At home, I help make bread, and I help roast the meat."

"Bread good. Meat good," Kazbo said. "Cactus bad."

"You mean that they taste good?" she asked. "Well, sure, bread and meat are delicious. Perhaps I'll get to bake you bread some day. But I doubt that anyone really likes eating cactus."

"You like cooking cactus?"

Sanja felt confused about his sudden obsession with cactus. "Well, like I said, it wasn't really cooking, but no I don't like cooking it."

Kazbo nodded and grinned. "Taurahe same as cactus. Good to speak to you. Good to speak to Jorga. Not like... no rhymes."

"That sounds like something Dad says," Jorga interjected. "To get what you want, sometimes you have to do things you'd that you don't want to do – or do them in a way that wouldn't rather."

Kazbo pointed at the boy and nodded. "That, yes."

"I suppose that's okay," Sanja agreed. "The Tauren don't rhyme. I had never even heard of such a thing until I met Elizabeth. She taught me a few rhymes she called 'limericks'."

"Elizabeth taught you limericks?" the little man said. His face lit up like the morning sun. "Tell me limericks!"

"No!" Sanja nearly shouted. She covered her mouth with her hands. "I couldn't. Most of them were about Orcs, and they weren't very nice. And besides..." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "They weren't the sorts of words that a girl can say to a boy."

"I... good." Kazbo smiled and pointed to his head to indicate that he understood. "You make up new limerick. Make up nice limerick."

"No, I don't think I could." Sanja waved her hands. "Besides, I don't think Taurahe is supposed to be rhymed. It's supposed to be sung."

"Sung?"

"Well, sure. The Tauren sing everything that's important," she explained to the Gnome. "We sing when a calf is born, or when an elder dies. We sing as we leave for battle, or to welcome another tribe to join us. We sing all of our stories. Every story is a song."

"You sing?" Kazbo asked.

"Well, of course I do! Every Tauren sings."

"You sing Kazbo a story?"

"Okay," she said with a smile, "if you would like me to."

Sanja began to sing in unhurried, deep tones. It was beautiful and melodic, wholly unlike the songs of any other race. Her story wasn't bright like a colorful bird, but it was breathtaking, like a mountain partially shrouded in mist.

# # #

Otaha was the greatest hunter who ever had lived.

He could run for a day and a night without stopping to catch his breath.

He spear never trembled and his aim never faltered.

His family never went hungry and there was always leather –

to clothe his calves as they grew.

He was the greatest hunter. The greatest hunter who ever did live.

Otaha decided that he would hunt Arra'chea, the mother of all kodos.

His tribe did cheer when they heard the news;

and Otaha headed out alone to hunt the kodo goddess.

He walked across the breadth of Mulgore.

He climbed perilous cliffs, and ascended the Bluff of the Eternals.

Otaha was the greatest hunter who ever had lived.

He tracked her prints and he followed her spoor.

Until, at last, he faced Arra'chea.

Atop that high mountain, it was just the goddess of the kodos,

the mightiest hunter, and the spear that he held.

But Arra'chea did not charge him. She did not flee from his sight.

She was the mother of all kodos. The goddess Arra'chea.

"Why do you hunt me, Otaha," she asked. "Your people have meat in their bellies,

tools made from bone, and tents of stretched hide."

"I am the hunter, and you are the prey," he told the goddess.

"But you have come alone," she said. "You are not strong enough to carry

my meat back to your village. You could not drag my hide back down the mountain."

"I am the hunter, and you are the prey," he told the goddess.

"But you have traveled too far," she explained. "My flesh would spoil

before you could return. I would die without purpose, if you do this today."

But he was the hunter, and she was the prey.

"You do not seek me" the goddess explained.

"I think you search for a purpose – a reason for being."

Otaha dropped his spear and groveled before her.

"I think that I must," he prayed to the goddess. "I need more than this."

Arra'chea chewed on her cud and the ground began to tremble and shake.

The air filled with the sound of distant hooves.

"Return to your utankan," the goddess did speak. "Do not forget your spear."

Your destiny awaits you, Otaha.

The valley had filled with Centaurs. They dotted the land.

They walked, like prey, on four legs, but they carried hunters' spears in their hands.

The Centaurs were a challenge, the like Otaha had never seen.

He crept across the valley, back to his village and home.

But his sons and daughters lay dead. His family murdered by invaders.

His destiny awaits, a destiny alone.

The Tauren fled to The Barrens, never to return.

A bull from this tribe, a cow from that.

They found calves that the Centaur had left alone to starve.

The Tauren formed new tribes, and wandered in exile.

"Oh, why did this happen?" They sang to the heavens.

Otaha followed at a distance and listened to their cries.

For twenty summers and twenty winters, until he was impossibly old,

he followed the scattered tribes.

He sang to them all of his folly and how he had cost them their families.

He carried his spear, as Arra'chea had bid him.

But he hunted no prey and ate only bread.

He fathered no more calves. His bloodline was lost.

When he could walk no further, he laid down in the sand.

No tears were shed for Otaha, no songs of grief filled the desert air.

But the tribes continued to tell this story from one generation to the next.

And Otaha had found his purpose, as the goddess had said that he must.

For his life was a warning. Skill without purpose is a danger to us all.

# # #

Kazbo listened to the song as they walked. When it was over, he smiled. "I like your song. You sing good. But why were they never to return? The Tauren did return to Mulgore," he said.

"Yes, that's true," Sanja said. "And that is why you will never hear a Tauren speak ill of Orcs."

# # #

The trio stopped when they crossed Theodore's camp for a second time. There was still a little light remaining, but Sanja was hesitant to push Kazbo to walk any further.

And besides, she reasoned, by making camp before nightfall, that left a little time to look for anything more tasty than cactus.

Theodore ignored the trio, and for that Sanja was thankful. Kazbo collapsed in a heap.

"Could you gather some wood?" she asked her brother, "I'll try to find something decent to eat."

But before anyone could leave camp, they heard the unmistakable sound of galloping hooves.

Sanja and Jorga grabbed rocks and prepared to throw them. Even the exhausted Kazbo jumped to his feet as the Centaur ran up.

The beast was horrid, and terrified the Tauren even more so than did Theodore's enchanted form. Neither had seen a Centaur before, but the sight was every bit as frightening as their father had promised.

The creature was taller than Sanja and had a muscular, tanned chest. Its head was shaved, save for a long braid of hair that erupted from the back of his skull. Dark brown fur covered each of his shoulders. The man's torso ended at his hips, where the body of a small, dark brown stallion began.

The creature's smell was intense. She had helped tan horse hides before and the unforgettable smell of sweat and dirt was much the same. But it would have taken a stack of hides several feet thick to measure up to the smell of a living Centaur.

"Halt!" the man shouted in Common. "Who are you to trespass on Magram land?" He leveled his spear at Sanja, the obsidian head only inches from her muzzle. She stepped slowly backwards, towards the campfire, but she did not loosen her grip on the two rocks she held.

Theodore stepped casually in front of Sanja. "I'm just a friend," he said. He pushed the spear away with disinterest, as if the Centaur were merely offering it as a gift. "I'm passing through to reach the Trail of Woe."

"No friend of the Magram travels with Tauren!" he shouted. His fists tightened on the spear's leather grips. His wrists were wrapped in leather bracers, and matching leather bands decorated his legs and the base of his tail.

"Oh them? They're just my slaves," Theodore explained. The Magram had raised his spear once more, but the rogue just stepped closer; leaving little room to maneuver the weapon in the space between them. "Perhaps you would you like to buy them? I was planning on selling them when I reached Nijel's Point. But for a fair price, they could be yours now."

"Buy them?" the Centaur shouted. He shifted the spear to his right hand so that he could put his face directly in Theodore's. "They are Tauren, and on Magram land. Their lives are forfeit!"

Sanja swallowed hard and tried to control the trembling that threatened to overwhelm her. If their choices were a lifetime of servitude or being left with the Magram, then she'd opt for slavery every time.

"Leave them with me," the Centaur growled in the Gilnean's face, "and you may go."

"That's not going to happen, friend. Those two are valuable property." The rogue stepped forward, crowding the Centaur a little more.

The Magram stood his ground, but he lifted his head so that Theodore was just staring at his sweaty chest.

"Offer me fifty pieces of silver for the pair." He smiled, showing too many teeth. "I could let the boy go for fifteen, but I would never leave the girl for less than forty."


	7. Chapter 7

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 7**

"I offer you your own worthless hide!" the Centaur shouted in Theodore's face. The rogue seemed unruffled by the sweaty half-man.

Sanja and her brother tightened their grip on the stones they prepared to throw. Kazbo fidgeted nervously behind the campfire.

"Leave the Tauren and walk away. Unless you would rather perish with them..."

The following moments unfolded in the blink of an eye.

The enraged Centaur foolishly lowered his spear as he shouted, and the spearhead nearly touched the sandy ground.

Theodore launched off of his right foot and brought his left boot down square on the end of the spear. The sudden leverage snapped it out of the Centaur's grip.

"Oops!" Theodore laughed, but the sound was far deeper and ominous than it should have been. He had become the beast once more, both huge and menacing.

"Wha...?" gasped the Magram, but before the Centaur could react, the Worgen had already jumped on his back and wrapped his long legs around the creature's horse-waist.

"You should have taken my deal!" the werewolf laughed. He gripped the Centaur's braid in his left hand and an unsheathed dagger in his right.

The Magram whinnied and reared up high in the air, trying to knock the rogue from his back. Sanja dashed forward. She snatched the spear and rolled out from under the Centaur's hooves in one fluid motion.

"Fifty pieces of silver!" the werewolf shouted.

He could easily have driven his knife into the terrified beast's back, but instead he slashed at the horse-flanks behind him. The steel knife had to have been razor sharp, as the gashes it opened looked both huge and deep. For a moment, it looked like some sick parody of a rider whipping his mount to go faster.

The Centaur let out a scream of pain unlike any the Tauren had heard before. It was a horrible sound, somewhere between that of a man and a horse. Sanja almost dropped the spear and covered her ears. It seemed to last for hours, and even after the man stopped screaming, the sound seemed to echo inside of her head.

The horse-man grabbed at a knife on his belt. But Theodore slid his dagger into the man's armpit and slashed viciously upward, instantly severing a number of crucial tendons. "Just look at that merchandise!" The Worgen shouted. "They would be a bargain at twice the price!"

The Magram reared up again and flopped over on its back, trying to crush his rider or at least trap the werewolf's leg under his weight. His left hand waved furiously, trying to grab on to the slippery rogue.

Theodore leapt from the beast's back at the last moment and rolled smoothly to his feet. "Why, the boy could fetch water for you." He grinned at the wounded man.

"You bastard," the Centaur muttered. He pulled his knife – awkwardly with his left hand – and struggled to climb back to his feet.

"So you _don't_ like little boys?" the Worgen chuckled and slashed with his dagger. "Perhaps I guessed wrong about your tastes!"

The Centaur charged at Theodore and tried to trample him, but with one wounded haunch, he moved slowly enough to allow the leather-clad monster to slide past the crushing hooves. An outstretched dagger drew a long bloody line down the length of his horse-body.

"The girl, perhaps," the Worgen said as the Centaur made a quick turn. "Why, she could muck out your filthy hovel."

The Magram charged at Theodore once more. He reared up and tried to bring his hooves down on top of the beast.

"You will regret missing this deal!" the rogue laughed as he ducked under the Centaur for a final time.

The Magram staggered where he landed and his horse-belly opened wide, spilling giant loops of intestine out across the sand.

Theodore, looking human once more, strode casually around until he was facing the dying Centaur. The half-man/half-horse beast struggled to stay upright; his dagger fell from his hand.

"No one cheats a Gilnean of what is rightfully his," Theodore whispered. He raised his dagger in both hands and prepared to show the Centaur a merciful death. But then changed his mind and slid the knife back in its sheath.

Theodore turned his back on the Magram and faced the wide-eyed Tauren girl. She held the spear in front of her with a death-grip. The head had snapped away at the start of battle and it shook in her hands with a palsy.

The rogue paid no more attention to the weapon now, then when the Centaur had held it. "There, I saved your life. Now you owe me!"

Sanja's jaw went slack for a long moment and she stared at him – speechless. But the words came flowing back, pushed ahead by a flash flood of hate. "We owe you nothing!" she screamed. "You... you didn't kill that man to protect us. You killed him because you _wanted_ to kill him. You are either a wholly corrupt, evil, evil man or..." She stopped and her brain raced for any other explanation. "Or a man who is so stupid that he doesn't even know why he does what he does."

Theodore shrugged and dismissed her words. "Tauren are so ungrateful."

He turned back around and relieved the dying creature of his purse. The Centaur reached up at him from where he laid with a blood-slicked hand, but the rogue just batted it away.

"Well here's why he didn't counter-offer," Theodore exclaimed. "One... no two pieces of silver and a handful of copper. Well, have no fear, little cow," he patted her furry cheek with a bloody hand as he walked by her, "not everyone in Desolace can be this poor. We will find someone who can afford to own you."

# # #

The rogue walked off into the darkness without another word.

Sanja collapsed to her knees and the desert went silent, save for the crackling fire and the rasping breaths of the dying man behind her.

After a few long minutes, she regained her composure. She put the dropped dagger in the sheath at her hip and threw her pack back across her shoulders.

"You can't be leaving," Kazbo shouted in Common. "Where are you going?"

"We have to leave," she said. "His family will come looking for him. The body is too big to bury. By morning the skies will be filled with swoops and vultures. More Centaurs will follow."

"Please... help..." the dying man gasped through bubbles of blood. She had to look away. There was nothing that could be done for him.

"We cannot proceed, I swear, I lament! I pushed hard all day and my energy's spent," Kazbo complained. "Is there fruit or any meat? I need some rest and have to eat."

Sanja looked around the campsite to see if Theodore had, in his haste, left any meat behind. But there was none.

The metallic smell of blood was nearly overwhelming. Sanja had helped prepare meat so many times in the past, but the hunters had always drained and gutted the carcasses before returning to camp.

She couldn't bring herself to say the words, so instead she gestured to the horse flank and gave Kazbo a meaningful look.

He seemed confused for a moment and then waved his hands in front of him. His skin looked very pale. "I hope you are joking; surely you jest! How is it you could even suggest...?"

She ignored him and looked to her brother. His eyes went wide.

"The... the cactus wasn't _that_ bad," he stammered.

Sanja nodded and returned silently to gathering her stuff. She was relieved that neither of the others had to have meat for dinner. They had eaten _regular_ horses many times before, but this was very different.

Despite her own hunger, she was certain she couldn't have carved into the dying man's flank. And she doubted she could have hastened his death.

_Could I do it if he was already dead?_ she wondered, but had no answer. She wanted to leave before his final breath, so she wouldn't have to find out.

Sanja picked the spear back up and studied the broken end for a moment. "This could be useful. Perhaps we can use my broken knife as a spearhead.

"Is everyone ready to go?"

"I could summon intense flames with my words." Kazbo lit up. "Then there will be nothing left to attract the birds."

The Tauren looked at each other without emotion. The Gnome's magic was quite impressive, but they wouldn't even be in Desolace if the little mage could control the power he wielded.

"Inferno I command; consume as if tinder," the little man chanted. "Burst forth now and leave only cinder."

There was a bright flash and a low, bass "_foop_!"

Kazbo's eyes readjusted to the darkness and the body was gone. He grinned to his companions, but the Tauren had their hands over their heads and were scrambling for cover.

For several long seconds, warm, wet chunks of meat continued rain down.

Sanja and Jorga stared in both shock and horror at the little man as he stood motionless amid the gore. He opened his mouth and searched for words.

"Yuck."

Eventually Jorga elbowed Sanja.

"Ow! ...Well, um, our only hope is to walk through the night, and get a head start." She wiped her face with her hand. "Centaurs run fast. So let's hope they can't track the smell of blood."

# # #

The trio walked for another hour before Kazbo fell behind. "I fear I must stop, my strength is done. I can no longer walk, much less run."

Sanja knelt before him and put her hands on his arms. "We have to keep going," she said. "Our only hope is to make it to the road before the Magram can track us to it."

"Without me, I'm sure help you will find," he moaned. "You have no choice but to leave me behind."

"Listen to me! No one gets left behind," she said. "Here, Jorga, I need you to carry the pack." There was precious little left in it, so he took it without complaint.

Sanja picked the little man up and put him on her shoulders. He was a lot lighter than her brother, but much, much heavier than the pack. "Just until you catch your breath," she explained.

They continued walking across the darkened desert. Sanja used the spear as a walking stick.

When he could take the silence no longer, Kazbo was compelled to speak. "I'm sorry to be such undue... of a burden upon both of you."

"It's okay. Your legs are short," she said. "You have to trot, just to keep up. I'd be tired too."

After several long minutes, Kazbo whispered in her ear. "I know that we both live in a time of war, but have you ever seen someone killed before?"

Sanja was thankful that he spoke in Common, but she did not answer immediately. She looked over to her brother and patted him on the back. "Are you doing okay, Jorga?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. Wish we could camp."

"Yeah, so do I," she replied. "Perhaps we can rest a bit in the morning."

Sanja let her brother get ahead of her a little ways before she whispered back to the Gnome. "No, Kazbo, I haven't. Have you?"

He dropped his voice too. "I have not been exposed to such strife. So, no, never before, in my whole life."

"I've hunted small game. I've seen the sentries come back with blood on their weapons. But this was different." She shook her head. "I can't stop hearing his scream."

She could feel the tiny man nod his head. "Yeah."

"I keep wondering, what if it had gone the other way?"

"On this, do you think you could expand?" he asked. "For I am certain that I don't understand."

"Well, what if a Centaur had rescued you, back on that mountain," she said. "What if the Centaur was helping you and a Tauren sentry had stopped you?"

"I don't know..."

"What if the Centaur and the two of you had crossed paths with Jorga and myself, huh?" she asked. "Would you be running from _my_ family, now? In the morning, would they be racing to avenge us?" There was a tremble in her voice.

Kazbo sighed in her ear. "Listen to me, I know what I say. Please don't torture yourself in this way."

"In what way?"

"You're letting these thoughts play in your imagination; and wondering 'what if, in a different situation'," he explained. "You can't blame us for choices that we haven't made, or base it on a past that hasn't been played."

Sanja turned her head and the little man leaned around so she could see some of his face.

"It is impossible for anyone to say; our friendship happened _this_ way." He gave her a reassuring smile. "I have concern for 'what next' we might find; so let's worry not, and leave 'what if' behind."

# # #

They walked through the night. Sanja carried the Gnome some of the time and he walked the rest.

The sky started to turn pink and Kazbo slipped into a sleep so deep that even shaking him would not wake him for more than a moment.

Sanja picked a low spot where they'd be well-concealed by scrub brush and they made camp for a few hours.

By mid-afternoon they had reached a wide, north-south notch in the sandstone that could only be the Trail of Woe.

Kazbo stretched his arms out wide and spun in place. His bright-red tunic and pale blue pants contrasted sharply with the grey, lifeless trail. "I can not believe we made it!" he shouted in Taurahe.

But the Tauren paid him no attention. They were both focused on something further west of the road, something that the tiny Gnome could not see.

"Is that what I think I smell?" Jorga said, his voice full of awe.

"It _has_ to be," Sanja replied in a similar tone.

And then, without any warning, the two were off and away like jackrabbits, bounding over and around the scrub.

Kazbo watched the two sprint into the distance. His jaw hung agape and his relief at having reached the road, faded.

He sniffed the air.

"Smell what?" he screamed at their backs.


	8. Chapter 8

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 8**

Kazbo ran after the Tauren, down, down into a depression in the desert floor. At the bottom, he found the pair in deep scrub brush. Sanja was climbing a scrawny tree – the only one without thorns that they had seen since entering Desolace – and Jorga circled underneath her, holding the pack open for her to drop things down into it.

"What is that tree?"

"It's a jacao," she shouted down at him, dropping another large pod down into the pack.

The Gnome picked up one of the jacao fruit from where it had fallen into a scrub. It was bright yellow and the same sort of size and shape as a tangerine.

"Don't eat that!" Sanja shouted. "Jacao fruit is poisonous. It might not kill you, but you'll get... well, you could end up dying of dehydration. I doubt we could find enough water to keep you alive."

Kazbo dropped the fruit and wiped his hands on his blood-stained shirt.

"So the beans...?"

She wagged her head from one side to the other. "Poisonous too, actually. But you can bake them in the coals of a campfire until they scream."

Jorga looked at him and made a quiet _eee!_ noise to imitate steam escaping.

"Then you can eat them safely."

The Gnome made an unhappy face. He wasn't sure which was better, cactus that tasted like "green," the haunch of a dying man, or a poisonous nut that _should_ be safe to eat.

Sanja was busily cutting pods away with her knife and dropping them into the bag. She paused for a moment and looked down at the Gnome. "Kazbo, tell me, what is your favorite thing to eat, in all of Azeroth?"

"My favorite?" He tugged on his bright, pink beard. "Well, in Stormwind, there is a _tavern_ called _The Golden Keg_." He used some Common words, since he knew no Taurahe translation. "The owner, a human named Colin, he makes _quail_, and he stuffs it with mushrooms and nuts."

He closed his eyes, remembering the beautiful aroma and the glistening beads of fat on the perfectly crisped skin. "I do not know if anything could taste better."

"Well, _our_ favorite food is The Sleeping Calf."

Jorga nodded in a wildly exaggerated manner.

"It's a piece of warm flat-bread, smeared with a huge glob of jacao, and sprinkled lightly with salt." She looked down at the little man and gestured with her hand. "You tear the end off of a baked pod and squeeze the nut paste out like... well, into a glob. Before you spread it, it looks a little like a calf on a sleeping mat."

"It looks a lot more like poop!" Jorga laughed but then grew somber. "If you say that, then adults say something like, 'I guess you won't want any.'"

"Yeah. We don't have any bread or salt, but I bet the jacao still tastes good without it."

"So these trees grow in Mulgore too?" Kazbo asked.

Sanja shook her head. "Definitely not. The only way to get jacao in Mulgore is to trade for it. Orcish traders like Thurg, Elizabeth's owner, gather it from Desolace and bring it in."

"Trade?" Kazbo tried to imagine what a people without technology could possibly have to trade. "What do they trade for jacao?"

"Well, pottery, of course," Jorga responded. "That's all traders ever want."

"We always make extra pots, just in case any traders come through." Sanja added.

Kazbo scratched his head. "So, Orcs love pottery? I never would have guessed that. They just seem so..."

Sanja laughed. "Oh, I doubt it. They just sell it to Goblins."

The little man sat down in the sand. "Hey! There's water here!" he shouted suddenly.

Sanja leapt from the tree and began digging in the sand beneath the scrub brush. "You're right! There's a lot of water."

"Why is it... orange?" Jorga whispered.

"The stream must flow under the ground, through a large... _deposit of iron ore_." he completed in Common. "_Rust_ should not make it poisonous."

Sanja studied the edges of the puddle for a long while. "I see insects!" she shouted in joy. "It must be safe."

Both of the Tauren dove face-first into the puddle and began to lap it up.

Everyone was thirsty. They had been rationing their water carefully since the beginning of the journey.

Kazbo waited patiently and stared at the twin tails drawing lazy figure-eights in the desert air. He eventually started to wonder if the Tauren could be related to camels.

When they could drink no more, they rolled out of the way and laid on their backs.

"Tastes yucky," Jorga said.

"This is the best day..." Sanja started to say before stopping herself. "Well, this day is getting better. A lot better than yesterday, at least."

They built a small campfire and rested, thankful that they could finally take their time without fear of being spotted by Centaurs.

# # #

"You're going to burn your mouth," Sanja admonished, but she couldn't really blame the boy for not waiting until the jacao pod was cool. Everyone was hungry.

Kazbo cautiously slurped the warm meat out of the singed jacao pod. It was the nuttiest flavor that he had ever tasted. Smooth, buttery, and a little sweet. He swished it around in his mouth a long while before swallowing.

"So?"

"I do not think this is quite as good as _quail_," he said at last. He closed his eyes. "But I can imagine it on top of bread and sprinkled with a little salt. That must be... amazing."

The Taurens nodded in unison.

The trio laid back and stared up at the stars. "So the Tauren make pottery. I did not know that," Kazbo said casually. "Do you know who is crazy about pottery?" The siblings looked up, but didn't speak. "Draenei." He nodded his head.

"Draenei can never get enough pottery. They hang it on their walls when they run out of _shelves_." Kazbo had gotten into the habit of shifting seamlessly to Common whenever he did not have a translation for a word. Quite often, he found, when Sanja did not know what a Common word meant, that no amount of description would help explain it.

Kazbo sat up, suddenly. "In fact, I have a Draenei friend – a big fellow, named Belenkar – who gave me clay bowl as a gift. Can you believe that he once _sailed_ all the way to the Goblin city of Booty Bay just to..."

The Gnome's mouth fell open and he stared at the Tauren.

"Is... is Tauren pottery brown and have black and white lines on it?" he stammered.

"I like to draw circles on them sometimes!" Jorga volunteered. "Circles are more fun than the lines."

Kazbo was silent for a long moment. "How could I have not seen this earlier? The bowl my _wife_ keeps fruit in must be Tauren-made!" He laughed and slapped his knee. "It would be so _bizarre_ if your family made my bowl!"

Jorga smiled, but Sanja looked confused. "What is a 'wife'?"

"Oh, sorry," Kazbo said. "My mate."

Sanja's brows furrowed. "Gnomes mate in the summer?"

He giggled nervously. "Well... um... heh..."

"Tauren mate in the fall," she explained.

"Oh! Well, Gnomes take a mate for life. I call her my _wife_, and she calls me her _husband_."

"So you have a calf?" Jorga asked.

Kazbo laughed loud. "We have two sons, but they are grown up now and have families of their own." He smiled at the boy. "One has a daughter who is about your age. She turned seven before I left on this voyage."

The pair stared at the Gnome in silence.

"How can your granddaughter be seven?" Jorga asked.

"Do you mean, seven summers and summer winters?" Sanja added.

"Yes, she is seven years old," Kazbo said, confusion evident on his face.

The girl scrabbled in the dirt for a moment and then put seven small stones into the Gnome's open hand. "Seven?" she said, making sure she understood correctly.

"Yes, seven."

"But how can that be? My grandmother, my father's mother is only eight."

"Eight?" Kazbo gasped. He picked up another small stone and poured the pile back into Sanja's hand. "Eight years old?"

The Tauren nodded in unison.

"So, then how old are you, Jorga?"

Jorga looked to his sister and then back to the tiny man. "All Tauren are born in the spring," he said as if it were obvious.

"You were born_ this_ year?"

When he nodded, Kazbo shifted his gaze to the girl. "And you, Sanja?"

"I'm a yearling, of course. Why, how old are you?"

"I'm..." the Gnome hesitated, suddenly uncomfortable, "one hundred and six."

"But no one lives that long!" Jorga shouted.

"Gnomes do," Kazbo explained. "I've met a Gnome who is over two hundred and fifty years old."

Sanja scratched her head. "You know... Elizabeth had told me that she was sixteen and I thought that she must be lying. The oldest Tauren in our tribe is only fifteen." She started nodding. "But I guess not every race lives the same length of time, do they?"

"No, they do not," Kazbo responded. "In fact, the Night Elves were once _immortal_."

"My father said that once. He said they were 'eternally youthful and that they never aged, no matter how many seasons passed,'" Sanja said, "but I couldn't believe him."

"No?"

"Well, how could that be true? Every year new calves are born and some of the oldest Tauren die," Sanja explained. "If the elders stopped dying, then there would be a whole lot of Tauren.

"So, I told the elders, 'If the Kaldorei were once immortal, then why are we not up to our horns in Night Elves?'" Sanja nodded her head, purposefully.

Kazbo smiled. "You are a very clever young woman. So what did the elders say to that?"

"Bo thought that perhaps most of the Night Elf bulls did not know how to impregnate Night Elf cows. This made all of the elders laugh." Her face turned angry. "No matter how I asked, no one would explain why this was funny."

The Gnome stroked his beard with one hand and worked to stifle his own mirth.

# # #

In the morning, the trio returned to the road with a full water skin and a backpack that brimmed over with jacao pods. They hiked north at a much more leisurely pace and stopped frequently to hunt for for rabbits and to let Kazbo rest.

To the Tauren's surprise, hunting in the desert was much easier than it had been back in Mulgore. Instead of hiding in deep holes, Desolace hares would run into nearly impenetrable cholla bushes. This defense would work perfectly on most predators, but the spines offered little protection against Sanja's spear.

Water was scarce, of course, but there was actually some to be found if you were not in a hurry. They were certainly not, and were all too glad to let Theodore get way, way ahead of them.

They did not see him anywhere, and he was far from missed. They once stopped at a campsite near the road that still had the remnants of a campfire.

Sanja picked up a piece of firewood that had not burnt completely. The rubbed the charred tip and looked at her fingers. "Theodore probably camped here," she said, showing her blackened fingertips to the others. "This was probably burned within the last few days."

She dug briefly into the ashes and shook her head. "No warm coals. Good. He must be over a day ahead of us."

The three stayed awake until all hours, laughing and sharing stories. Kazbo never told the siblings to go to sleep and Jorga reveled in his new-found freedom.

The boy got homesick at times and even cried once, but there was nothing that could be done for it. The road was a lonely place.

# # #

Kazbo grinned like a child when he spotted the clay banks of the oasis. He grabbed a pointed stick and plopped down in the mud without worry for his nearly-ruined clothing.

"Here, look," he said to Jorga. "Three little lines beside each other... that represents the 'hhh' sound."

Jorga looked to his sister and then back to Kazbo's impressions in the mud.

"A triangle, that's the sound 'orrr'. And then a slash, that's 'nnn'. And finally a dot. That's the 'sss' sound. Put them all together and that _spells_ hhorrnnss."

The Gnome grinned stupidly. "Get it?"

Jorga shrugged. "Why?"

"Well, it would not have to be here in the mud. I could make these marks anywhere and they would still say 'horns'." He studied the boy's blank expression. "I could carve these in a tree, or put it on a piece of _paper_, or _write_ it anywhere, really. And if you saw it, and you knew what each symbol sounded like, then you would know that I was telling you 'horns'. Get it?"

"But why would you tell me 'horns'?"

Kazbo shook his head and waved his mud-covered hands. "It would not have to be just 'horns,' why if you knew the symbols, then I could _write_ any message and you would know how to _read_ it. And you would know what I was telling you."

Jorga nodded for a moment and then started to shake his head. "Wouldn't it just be easier to tell me?"

The Gnome pointed up with a single finger. "Ah, but something wonderful happens when you can _read_. If I can _write_ something down, then you can _read_ it later. We don't have to be in the same place at the same time."

The boy shrugged, not really understanding the significance of this, or why it would be worth the effort to learn a bunch of symbols.

"Oh, I get it," Sanja said. She knelt behind the boy and put her hands on his shoulders. "So if everyone could _read_ and _write_, then storytellers could save their stories, and you could hear them whenever you wanted. You wouldn't have to wait for someone to tell it to you."

Jorga looked up at her sister.

"So you could hear the story of the Hammer and the Knife, and I could hear the story of the Warrior and the Butterfly, _at the same time_." She grinned wide. "And I wouldn't have to listen to that stupid, impossible story you like ever again."

"Hey!" Jorga shouted. He turned around and gave his sister a shove. "The Hammer and the Knife is _funny_. It's way better than the stupid butterfly story."

Jorga started prancing around in the mud. "Oh look at me. I'm too sad to fight a war! I wish I were a stupid butterfly."

Sanja threw the _first_ glob of mud.


	9. Chapter 9

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 9**

After twelve days on Trail of Woe, the journey came to an abrupt halt. A chasm that opened deep into the desert floor split the trail in two. There was no way to cross it – in either direction – for as far as the trio could see. The far edge of the chasm was a good twenty feet away and five or six feet higher than the edge they stood on.

"How can we possibly get there, now?" Kazbo squeaked in what the Tauren had learned was his frustrated voice.

"Well, unless you know some sort of flying spell, we can't cross," Sanja said. "We have no choice but to go around."

"Which way?" Jorga asked.

His sister studied the ground. "There's no sign of prints going east. Not a whole lot of prints going west, but it looks like the few people who have come this way all walked into the setting sun."

She looked at the others. "It's probably a bad idea to forge a new path without a map, so let's go west."

# # #

They followed the crack west for four days before encountering the oasis. It was so large, so impossibly huge, that Sanja and Jorga actually smelled it a full day before they were actually close enough to see it. They came over a rise, and there it was, stretching from one horizon to the other.

The trio stood in silence for a long minute before Sanja could gasp, "Wow."

She turned to Kazbo. "I had heard the stories about the archdruids trying to make Desolace lush once more, but I never really thought they could manage it."

"You didn't?" the Gnome asked.

"Well how could they? I could imagine a spell powerful enough to turn a sand dune lush, but that's huge! It's like a whole country."

She lowered her voice reverently, "They say that not even the ancients could do such a thing..."

# # #

The oasis was more than just a green island within a sea of rock and sand. It was a true swamp with oppressive humidity, vines that blocked the trail, and more stretches that had to be waded than those that could be hiked.

Kazbo slapped at his arm for the twentieth time and screamed. He looked to the Tauren with misery evident on his face. Large, red welts stood out sharply from his pink skin. "Aren't they biting you?"

The siblings looked at each other and shook their heads.

"They must be Horde mosquitoes!" Jorga laughed.

Sanja covered the boy's mouth and looked apologetic. "You look terrible!"

She rushed to a clump of grasses that were nearly as tall as herself. "See if you can find some flat rocks that we can use as a mortar and pestle," she instructed the boys.

Sanja used the knife and digging tool to cut down a thick clump of sweet-smelling lemon grass. Then she crushed it into an oily goop with the rocks that Jorga carried.

"This will keep the bites from itching?" The Gnome looked hopeful.

"Perhaps a little," she said, "but it will keep the bugs away, so at least you won't get bitten any more that you already are."

Kazbo removed his shirt and Jorga whistled at just how many welts covered his back. "They _love_ you!"

"I better crush some more," Sanja said. "You're going to need a lot."

# # #

Apart from the bugs, life in the swamp was even easier than it was in the desert. The land teemed with edible berries, mushrooms, and small creatures. It rained regularly, and instead of searching for water, they spent their days setting up shelters and searching for dry places to camp.

There was no dry firewood to be found, of course, but the little man's magic managed to set even the wettest wood ablaze.

"No... owa... halii!" the boys chanted in unison. Jorga reached over the vine he had strung between two trees and pushed the Gnome unceremoniously down on his rear end. He didn't even need to step over the vine to claim victory.

"Aw, come on. You're not even trying."

"I do not think rope wrestling is my sport," Kazbo muttered from where he sat. "And besides, I have not even had my blackroot this morning. I am barely awake as it is."

"What if I only use one hand?" Jorga suggested.

"Hey, be nice to Kazbo," Sanja said without getting up. "He's like twenty times older than Dad!"

"I am not _old_," he said with exaggerated emphasis. "I am just not as strong as your brother. He has muscles..."

"Like a bull?" Sanja offered with a smile.

"What are you doing, anyhow?" he asked. "I do not understand why you even kept all of those nasty jackrabbit pelts."

The pelts were pretty crude and stiff. She had scraped all of the meat from the hides to keep them from rotting. She had even treated the insides with a paste made of brain meats and urine. But to truly tan each hide, she would have needed to work the leather over a rope for hours.

She had yet to weave a rope, and Sanja couldn't spare the time it would take to do this right. If they were going to hike, hunt, and set up camp every day, then something had to give. As it was, she hated how much time she had invested into cutting a needle from bone and turning the rabbit intestines into string.

Sadly, Kazbo didn't appear to have any practical skills at all. Her brother knew a little more, but he was still just a child. He had the same attention span shared by every calf in their first summer.

"Making clothes, of course," she said, as if it were obvious. "I really wish we could hunt larger prey. It's going to take an awful lot of rabbits to keep us covered... all the way back to Mulgore."

She gave him a meaningful look and the Gnome nodded. _Winter coats_, Kazbo inferred. In a year's time, he figured that Jorga would be larger than Sanja was now, and that she would be even larger still.

The pair looked over to Jorga, but the boy was too busy watching ants to have picked up on her coded message.

"Are you two almost ready to head out?"

Jorga shrugged and squished a bug with his thumb.

"I will go refill the water skin," Kazbo volunteered.

Sanja started packing up their possessions and the Gnome hauled the nearly-empty water skin down the trail to the water hole.

The Tauren looked up with a start when they heard the splash. Whatever made that sound was far too large to be a Gnome falling into a water hole.

Sanja grabbed the spear and ran.

# # #

The siblings found Kazbo gripping a small tree for dear life. His face and arms were ashen, and his lower half was deep within the jaws of a huge crocolisk. He was screaming for help.

The six-legged beast was a dark green and scaly. The trio had seen many of the giants, sunning themselves on muddy banks. They caught glimpses of more just beneath the surface, waiting to ambush the unsuspecting with their huge jaws and countless teeth. At six feet from snout to tail, this was far from one of the largest, but it would be easily big enough to drown and eat the poor Gnome.

Sanja stabbed viciously at the beast with her spear. It jerked in surprise at the attack, but the creature's hide was far thicker than she had realized, and the wound she gave it was more minor than she had hoped.

She raised the spear and jabbed again. Jorga hurled a stone at the croc's head and readied to throw another.

Kazbo was saying something, but over the lizard's grunting and the Tauren's screams, it was lost completely.

She stabbed and stabbed and stabbed again. She wanted to try pull the poor man out of its jaws, but had serious doubts that she was even strong enough to pry them apart while the beast still lived.

Sanja lifted the spear far overhead with both hands, and with a mighty grunt, she drove it down into the muddy bank.

The soft breeze blew a small, pink cloud of smoke away from the battle, revealing that the crocolisk was gone. Kazbo was held aloft in the tiny mouth of a white and fluffy sheep.

The sheep looked as confused as Sanja felt. The Gnome fell from its mouth with a _thud_, and it bleated a perplexed _Baa!_

Sanja leveled her spear at the wooly mammal, but Kazbo cried out in fright. "Don't! We have to run!"

Without questioning, she scooped the mage up in one arm and started beating her hooves back to camp. Jorga was close behind.

# # #

Kazbo's eyes were wide and round. He gasped huge breaths for many long minutes as little blooms of crimson started to soak through his clothes.

"Monster" was the only word he could manage.

Sanja rummaged through her pack and waited for him to get his breathing under control. That's when he suddenly realized he was wounded.

"I'm dying!" Kazbo gasped.

"I doubt it," Sanja reassured him. She rolled a few leaves of bruiseweed together. "Here, put this under your tongue. It will help with the pain.

"Why didn't you say that you could turn them into sheep?" she asked. "We could have been having lamb chops for dinner, and I could stitch their pelts instead of hundreds of jackrabbit skins!"

Kazbo shook his head. "No, it would not work. Stabbing them with the spear would break the enchantment."

She nodded. "A shame. Well, lift up your tunic. Let's see how bad he got you."

The wounds were small, but deep. They stretched across the Gnome's belly at an angle and down to his hip. On his back there were a matching set that stretched from his right shoulder to his left buttock.

"Whew, I'm relieved. You are the luckiest little man I have ever seen," Sanja sighed. Jorga looked far less impressed. He made the foulest face, as if he would vomit, but he refused to look away.

"I do not feel lucky," the Gnome grumbled.

"Well you should." Sanja touched his wounded back very gently. "That croc' could have torn you in half, or at least ripped the flesh from your body. But his teeth really didn't tear the skin at all.

"_And_ he sunk one tooth on the left side of your spine and the next tooth on the right side." She nodded her head. "If he had grabbed you only a half an inch farther up or down..." She snapped her fingers. "You would never walk again."

Kazbo turned stiffly around and looked at the kneeling cow eye-to-eye. Some of the color had returned to his normally-pink cheeks.

"That is the good, I'm afraid," she explained. "The bad is that these are puncture wounds, and you have a lot of them. Puncture wounds always get infected."

Kazbo frowned.

"You can still walk now."

"It hurts to move," he interrupted. "A lot."

"It will hurt more tomorrow, and the day after that." She put her hands gently around his arms. "It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

"I'll go collect some herbs. I can make a poultice that will help fight the infection, but by tomorrow we will have to sew these wounds closed. They will heal even slower if we don't."

His face went ashen again. "With the needle and guts you used to sew pelts?" Large enough to hold in her huge, Tauren fingers, the crude instrument seemed more like a weapon of torture than of healing.

"I am afraid so. Unless you know some healing magic, then that is the best we have."

"Arcane magic cannot heal," he explained. "It sounds like I will be holding the two of you back once more..."

Sanja pointed in his face with her wide, primary finger. "Don't say it. Nobody gets left behind."

Kazbo closed his mouth.

"Besides, there is plenty of food and water. We can camp here as long as we need to until you have recovered fully. It's not like we're in a hurry..." Sanja slapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late – Jorga had already heard the words.


	10. Chapter 10

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 10**

"What do you mean by that?" Jorga gasped.

Sanja turned to look. He seemed more stunned than angry.

"Of course we're in a hurry! I want to see Mom and Dad again."

Sanja flopped down on her butt and covered her face with her hands. "We will. We will see them again, but Kazbo needs time to recover from his injuries. And hurrying isn't going to get us back any sooner."

"Of course it will!" Jorga yelled, ignoring the Gnome for a moment. "Every day we sit here is one more day before we get home."

"Ugh," Sanja groaned. "I was really hoping I wouldn't have to tell you this yet, but to get home, we have to go through the Stonetalon pass. Even if we left Kazbo behind – which we won't – and started hiking now, then we would be too late to get to the pass, it would already be filled with snow."

She looked up into her brother's eyes. They were full of disbelief.

"There's no way to get through the snow. I'm sorry, Kiddo, but even if we dug our way through it, we'd just starve to death or freeze.

"We're going to have to camp in the foothills for the winter." She winced and prepared to say what she had been holding from him. "And then we can cross back into Mulgore when the snow melts next summer..."

Jorga's jaw hung open. He gasped. "You lied to me!"

"No! I never lied to you," Sanja said, trying to keep calm. "I said that we had a very long journey ahead of us."

"But you _could_ have told me!"

Sanja nodded and stared at her knees. "I could have. I was afraid you'd give up, or refuse to go on if you knew just how long it was going to take."

"You're doing this on purpose! You don't want to go back to Mulgore." She looked up to see flames behind the little boy's eyes. His black mane seemed to stand on end. The white splotch on his forehead shined like a beacon into her soul. "You don't want to go back because you don't have any friends back home!"

"That's not true!" she shouted.

"You're keeping me from getting home because you're hoping Kazbo will take you back to Gnomeregan, so you can read books and be a librarian!" He looked almost panicked. He smelled panicked. The insides of his ears were bright red. "I don't want to go to Gnomeregan! I want to go home! I want to see Mom and Dad!"

"We will go home. I promise!" she said. "We're going as fast as we can. But no matter how much we hurry, we can't get home this year." Her eyes were full of tears.

"I hate you! You're the worst sister anyone has ever had!" He screamed. "I hate both of you!"

# # #

Sanja watched him run from the campsite, his tail hanging low, but she felt too weak to chase him. She looked over at the Gnome when she had finally composed herself.

"You should go after him. Don't worry about me."

Sanja shook her head and wiped away a few tears. "He's got every right to be mad. He just needs some time to cool off." She tried to manage a smile with only mixed success. "Tauren blood runs hot. He's angry, but he won't go far.

"Besides," she added, "getting your herbs is more important. We need to get that poultice on you before infection sets in."

# # #

Sanja returned with a variety of roots, leaves, and berries by mid-afternoon. Kazbo looked worse than when she had left, but at least he was still conscious. His lips were black and blue from sucking on bruiseweed.

"He hasn't come back."

Sanja nodded.

# # #

Sanja listened to the crackling fire without a word. She didn't have the strength to hunt, so she was just roasting some of the tubers from her pack.

In her searches for herbs, she had also returned with a large load of plant fibre, stripped from inside some bark she had peeled from a dying tree. With one end looped around her hoof, she worked endlessly to twist the fibre into twine.

She had hoped that the work would take her mind off her brother, but it hadn't.

"Aren't you worried?"

"Of course I'm worried!" She shouted at the Gnome, interrupting him. "I'm worried sick. He could get bitten by a poisonous snake, or fall out of a tree, or who-knows-what."

Sanja looked apologetic. "Mom made me promise, before we left, that I'd look after him. She makes me promise the same thing every day, like I was going to forget or something."

The chirping of jungle birds filled the silence between them.

"I hope that when my granddaughter grows up," Kazbo said with a smile, "that she is a lot like you.

"If I make it back home..."

"You will," she reassured him.

"I think I would very much like to learn how to cook, or how to make pottery. And then when Sorassa is a little older, I think I will try to teach her."

Sanja didn't know what to say. She didn't feel like a role model. She dropped her ears in a Tauren blush.

"Sorassa is a very pretty name," she mumbled.

"My oldest, Hagin, named her after his grandmother, my mother."

He smiled and thought back on happier times... back when everyone was in good health and his entire, extended family lived nearby. He thought about the days before the war, before the fall of Gnomeregan.

Kazbo was, as were all Gnomes, thrilled by the eventual recapture of their capital, but Gnomeregan was not yet the same as it once had been. Troggs still roamed some irradiated sections unchecked, and few of the underground city's original inhabitants had returned. It could be decades before the once-great city regained its former glory, if it ever did.

"I'm really sorry about what Jorga said before he left." Sanja readjusted the twine from between her toes and grabbed another handful of fibre. She avoided looking in his face. "I don't know where he got the idea that I wanted to go to Gnomeregan. I never said that."

A silence stretched.

"I guess I am jealous of you. Jorga can sense that." She shrugged. "If so many books really do exist... well, I would like to see them some day."

"They do exist," Kazbo said. "There are thousands and thousands of books in our library alone. Some of the tomes are so large and thick that you can't even... well, I suppose _you_ could lift them."

That earned him a small, private smile.

"I suppose I could never read them all, even if I live to be twenty." Sanja's eyes brightened a bit. "But I bet you have! One hundred and six years is _forever_. I bet you have read them all a dozen times."

The Gnome smiled and shook his head. "I have not read the half of them. Though some I have read more than once."

She stared at the little man in awe, her worries forgotten for the moment. "But how can that be? Do the years underground pass more swiftly than our years on the prairie?"

Kazbo chuckled briefly and then clutched his wounds in pain. "Gnomish books are very long," he said. "Your song about the Tauren leaving Mulgore could fit on a couple of sheets, but a single Gnomish book can contain hundreds of pages. And some of the books are very, very old, and written in languages that few living people recall."

The girl looked up at the trees overhead and tried to imagine such books.

"No Tauren tale is so long," she explained. "Sitting around the fire is everyone's chance to talk. If an elder were to try to sing a Gnomish tale, I suppose his voice would give out long before he reached the end."

The fire crackled.

"Do you think I should look for him?"

There was suddenly a noise in the distance. The day was starting to grow dimmer, but the two could clearly see Jorga sprint around a corner in the road and head towards the camp.

His eyes were wide with fear.

"You came back," Kazbo started to say.

"Someone is coming!" Jorga hissed as soon as he was close enough that he didn't have to shout.

Sanja jumped to her feet and grabbed her spear. "Is it Theodore?" she whispered.

The boy shrugged and she looked around the campsite. They could not hide. Kazbo could barely move; and even if the fire were doused, it would continue to smoke. It would be obvious to any passerby that they had been there only moments earlier.

"Was it Horde?" the Gnome hissed. The whites of his eyes shown wide.

"I don't know!" the boy mouthed. "But they're coming this way!"

"Don't worry about the Horde," she assured him. "Just stay behind us and we'll explain that you're a friend. They will not harm you."

She hoped that her faith in the Horde was not misplaced. She was confident that other Tauren would listen to her for long enough to hold off judgment of the Gnome. But what if the strangers were Orcs? Or Forsaken? Did the Forsaken listen to anyone? She doubted that.

"But what if they're Alliance?" Jorga hissed.

"I will protect you both," Kazbo groaned.

But Sanja shook her head. "Don't stand up. You'll only make your wounds worse."

A long minute passed. Sanja felt the need to say something to her brother, to scold him for running off, or to say that she was relieved that he was back, but nothing came out. She stayed fixed and focused on the path ahead.

"I smell them," Jorga whispered.

Sanja nodded. "I do too."

Kazbo looked frantically from one to the other. "Are they Trolls? Or undead?" he squeaked. "Are they Horde?"

Neither said a word. The Tauren stared down the road unblinking; waiting.

With a crunch of leaves, three shapes emerged from the trees.

Kazbo could hear the tension in Sanja's voice.

"Alliance."

# # #

Tall and slender, a man and woman stopped in their tracks. Their skin was dark and rosy, almost violet in hue. They were both dressed in ornate leather armor.

The third figure was a dark grey jungle cat. Off-white spots covered its sleek pelt.

"Horde!" the man yelled. In a single, fluid motion, he pulled the bright red bow from his back and nocked a steel-bladed arrow on the string.

The woman, curvaceous as she was beautiful, leapt forward onto all fours. She shifted forms as she fell, and a huge, reddish-brown bear roared where she landed.

The jungle cat was already running toward the trio, and closing the gap between them fast.

The archer drew the arrow to his ear and Sanja screamed. Her body fell on top of Jorga.


	11. Chapter 11

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 11**

"Stop!" Kazbo screamed. "Don't hurt my friends!"

Sanja squeezed her brother tightly and tried to shield his little body from the archer's attack.

The bear charged forward with shocking speed and reached the Tauren just as the jungle cat leapt at the huddled forms.

Sanja shook uncontrollably as she waited to be struck, but it did not come.

"Wait, Ellemayne," the Night Elf woman said softly in Common. She unhooked its claws from where they had dug into her armor. "Do not hurt them."

Sanja looked up at the beautiful woman that had been a bear only moments prior. She had saved them from the nightsaber's claws, but she still faced the young Horde with caution. Her eyes were strange and unreadable. She held a small, green-handled knife before her.

"Are you well?" the woman called over to Kazbo.

The little man's face looked bad; very bad, actually. One of his eyes was black and blue. He had been laying his head on his hand, and now that cheek was bruised as well.

"I realize that trusting is not without risk," he explained in Common. "But my friends didn't harm me, that was a crocolisk! _Sanja_ and _Jorga_, they both saved my life." Kazbo accented the Tauren names to make it clear that they were people, not enemies. "So please, I beg you, put away the knife."

With great trepidation, the woman slowly returned her blade to its sheath. Her face relaxed a little and the archer approached at a jog. Ellemayne sat on her haunches, content that there was no need to fight.

"I gave Kazbo some bruiseweed to suck on, for the pain," Sanja explained in Common. The elves looked surprised that she could speak something that they would understand. "With all of our fur, my people's reaction to the leaves is... well, less dramatic."

"My apologies," the man said in an icy smooth voice, "I thought the Gnome was held captive."

"I am Kazbo Fizzgimbels. Transcriber of symbols."

"It is an honor to meet you, Kazbo. I am Tanavar, and this is my wife, Meridia." He bowed low, from the waist.

"I'm Sanja," Sanja said, not that anyone had asked. She got up off of her brother. "This is Jorga."

To Sanja's surprise, Meridia's face went from cold to beaming the moment she saw the boy. She bounced in place happily and tugged on her husband's hand.

"Your son!" she squeaked. "He is adorable."

Normally, Sanja would be insulted by such a comment. But she was just relieved that they had met someone on the journey, and that no one had to get killed. "He's my brother, actually..."

"May I hold him?" It was impossible to follow her peculiar, glowing eyes, but Sanja doubted that the woman had ever even looked at her. She couldn't take her attention off of Jorga.

_What a strange request!_ Sanja thought. It was common among the cows of her utankan to want to hold another's newborn, but Jorga was deep in the middle of his first summer. Boys like Jorga never wanted to be held unless they were frightened or injured.

She looked over to her brother and he looked back at her with similar bewilderment.

Without another word, Meridia scooped Jorga up and squeezed him to her heart. The poor boy looked puzzled and awkward for a moment, and then to Sanja's surprise, he seemed to melt into the strange woman's embrace. In just seconds, she could see all of his homesickness dissolve away. All of the morning's animosity seemed to fade into the unexpected tenderness.

Sanja shared a private look with Kazbo. His bruised face seemed to say, _I'm very proud of you!_ Hers said simply, _Thanks._

Ellemayne butted her head insistently against Sanja's arm and purred a deep, and almost frightening sound. Sanja started petting her, but that made the huge cat only more demanding of her attention.

"The children have been separated from their kin; and are facing a journey, year-long from start to fin," Kazbo explained. "I am partially responsible for their predicament; and so, their party, I do augment."

Kazbo sighed deeply. "Though they take better care, working in tandem; than I have proven to take of them."

"If you are not in need of help," Tanavar said, "then we will take our leave."

Meridia looked stricken at the thought of leaving.

"Don't go, please," Sanja said. "We haven't seen another person in weeks. If you're not in a hurry; I think we'd all appreciate having a little company. Even if just for the evening."

The Night Elf woman looked between Sanja and her husband.

"The three of us are stuck here until Kazbo has recovered," Sanja babbled nervously. "I put some Briarthorn on his injuries, but I haven't yet... tried... to stitch his wounds closed." She looked down at her hands and realized that they were trembling at the very thought. She clasped them behind her back.

"I can help out there," the druid said. She looked down at the boy in her arms. "Would you like to help heal your friend's wounds?"

Jorga looked up at her, but said nothing. She set him down on his hooves and carefully lifted the little man's blood-stained jersey.

Druid magic is a beautiful thing. Mages bend reality with their iron will and extensive knowledge. Warlocks and shaman derive their powers from demons and spirits. But druids call upon the power of nature; not because they command it or promise it something in return, but because they are somehow attuned to nature itself.

Druids can heal injuries because it is in the nature of a wound to be healed.

With a foreign word and a complex gesture, Meridia began to focus her powers on Kazbo's wounds. The air filled with the sound of wings and the smell of honey. Around her spun sparkles of light, and then ghost-like leaves of deep green ivy. It was mesmerizing to watch.

In a minute, the spell was complete and Sanja stumbled to stay upright. She felt a quick flash of vertigo as the spinning leaves vanished.

"How do you feel now?" the druid asked.

"I feel... wonderful! Mended, repaired, and even powerful!" Kazbo shouted. He jumped to his feet and waved his arms in the air. "Thank you!"

Sanja swooped in and caught the Gnome before he tipped over into the campfire. "You should probably sit back down," she told him. "You've had so much bruiseweed that it's a wonder you can even see straight."

Kazbo chuckled and returned to where he had been sitting. The magic had not healed the discoloration on his face, but at least he was smiling. In fact, he was positively beaming.

"Thank you so much," Sanja said, falling to her knees. She was relieved beyond belief that she would not have to sew her friend's wounds closed. The bruiseweed would help some, of course, but the process would have been torture – for the both of them. "How can we ever repay you?"

Meridia smiled wide. She looked to her husband and there was a long pause.

"I suppose you could share your camp with us this night," Tanavar said with the hint of a smile. "Then we could call it even."

"Deal struck!" Sanja said, leaping to her hooves. Tanavar's long, green eyebrows twitched with surprise as she shook his hand. He seemed shocked to touch a member of the Horde, and a woman no less.

His wife's face seemed to grow a little colder.

"I'll put some jacao beans on the fire, to celebrate," Sanja said, far too relieved to sense any tension.

"Wonderful," Tanavar stuttered for a moment before regaining a calm demeanor. "We can roast the piglets I caught this afternoon as well."

Jorga's face lit up. "You have boar?"

"Indeed, we do!" Meridia twittered. She pressed the tip of a long finger to his nose and smiled.

# # #

"He toyed with the centaur, and death he did defer;" Kazbo explained to the Night Elves. "as if the rogue wanted the scout to linger and suffer."

"What a horrid story," Meridia gasped. "You poor, poor children. Is there anything we could do to help?"

"Well, I am assisting to get back to their home. Your help added, would exceed that of a Gnome." Kazbo smiled in a hopeful way.

"We won't be able to travel through the Stonetalon pass until the snows melt in mid-summer," Sanja explained. "So we're hoping to push on to the foothills of the mountains. Low enough to dodge the worst of the winter, but high enough that wood and game will be plentiful. We won't be able to make a tent, but perhaps we could find a cave or dig out a..."

"I'm afraid that wouldn't be possible," Tanavar said to Kazbo. "We're on an important mission to meet with the Princess Theradras."

Sanja made a sour face at being interrupted.

"We could come with you," Jorga said, his ears hopeful, "maybe the princess could help..."

Tanavar shook his head and gazed into the fire. "Her highness lives at the bottom of a sacred Centaur tomb called Maraudon. It is no place for a child. Especially not a Tauren child."

"You don't like me, do you?" Sanja blurted out.

All eyes were on her now.

Tanavar choked a bit on the pork he was eating. "I... never said that..." He looked from person to person.

Sanja ignored him. "You look at Kazbo when he speaks, but when I say something, you look away. Is it because I'm Horde? A girl? A Tauren?" Tanavar looked down and Sanja nodded. "So why do you dislike Tauren?"

"I do not dislike Tauren!" the Night Elf nearly shouted. "It's just that you... make me... uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable?" Sanja said; the surprise evident in her voice. "Why?"

Tanavar sighed deeply. "I doubt you could understand."

The girl growled softly and stared at him with a single squinting eye. "Try me."

Tanavar sat up and straightened his clothes. "Tell me about your home, back in Mulgore."

"Our... home?" Sanja looked from person to person before her gaze returned to the purple-faced man. "Well, we're nomads, so we move with the seasons to follow the animals; and to get to the different plants as they mature. We don't live in a single place."

He shook his head. "No, I mean, 'Tell me how your family stays dry when it rains and warm when it is cold.'"

"Oh, I see. We live in large tents that are light enough to carry with us. They smell like smoke and family." Sanja smiled as she thought about home. "We make them out of tanned kodo hides that are stitched together with sinew. Then we oil the seams to keep the out the rain. Wooden poles and ropes..."

Tanavar seemed disinterested. "How long does it take to make a tent?"

"Well, I guess it depends how many people are working on it." Sanja shrugged. "If everyone helps out, then just a few days."

"My people live in the trees."

Jorga looked up at the tall, slender man. "You nest... like birds?"

"Tauren don't climb trees," Sanja explained.

"When I was young, I selected my favorite hill in all of Ashenvale," Tanavar closed his glowing eyes and thought back. "I planted an acorn on top of it. I went to my hill every morning and gave the acorn a drink of water, and I asked it to grow for me."

The children looked at each other and then back to Tanavar.

"As the young tree grew, I named him Dor'diende, and I promised him that I would keep him from harm. I cleared away other plants that tried to take his sunlight or share his soil. I warded off the insects and animals that wanted to eat his leaves.

"I thanked the tree for growing," he explained, "and I asked him to leave some room for me, so that I could continue to take care of him, and keep him safe. And so Dor'diende did just that. He formed a hollow center. It was small at first, but as he grew, so did the space inside him."

Tanavar took a sip of the wine he kept in a skin. "After a hundred years had passed, there was room enough inside of Dor'diende for me to live – although the space was quite small and cramped for many years."

He looked over to Meridia and smiled. "When I married, I told him of my good fortune, and asked him to make some room also for my bride. Dor'diende continued to grow, and another hundred years later there was room for Meridia as well."

Jorga broke the silence that stretched. "You live... in a hole... in a tree?"

"I have met many, many Tauren in my lifetime," the man said, ignoring the question. "There were not always factions of Horde and Alliance, you know. And even now, many druids ignore this artificial fracture in their order.

"You, however, are a mysterious people." He raised one eyebrow and studied Sanja more closely. "I have seen a Tauren man meet another Tauren man and take instant dislike to him. There was no apparent reason. They just hated each other."

He shrugged in confusion. "I saw them wrestle around – in the _dirt_ – to determine who was the strongest. And after what I was certain would be bloodshed, they were suddenly the best of friends. It was as if they had known each other from birth."

Tanavar slapped his palms to his thighs and let out a confused breath. "This is not the Night Elf way." He seemed at a loss for words, and thought a long time before continuing. "We spend _decades_ getting to know one another. We call someone a friend after a _century_ of fellowship.

"But Tauren..." He shrugged again. "No sooner have I learned a Tauren's name, that I find he has been replaced by his progeny. It is..." He searched for a word. "Disorienting.

"How is someone ever supposed to befriend another that they only meet in passing?" He looked directly at Sanja. "I apologize for any discomfort I have made you feel, but I ask you; if a butterfly should land on your lap for a moment before fluttering off... do you think back on the friendship the two of you once shared?"

Sanja smiled at him for the first time in their conversation. She nodded her head. "I think I like you."

Tanavar seemed to collapse in on himself. He put a hand to his forehead. "I thank you for illustrating my point. But I ask you, why is it that you think that?"

Sanja pointed at him. "I like adults that aren't afraid to explain things that they don't think kids will get."

Jorga grinned. "I bet you have a lot of kids, don't you?"

Meridia looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, but Tanavar was the one to speak. "No, Elune has not yet blessed us."

"Oh! You should ask Kazbo how," Sanja said. "He has two sons."

The Gnome's face blushed red in the firelight.

"Er, um. Thank you," Tanavar said most graciously. "I will do that... later."


	12. Chapter 12

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 12**

Sanja's dreams were frightening and surreal. The elves had fled during the night and taken her brother with them. She tried to chase after them, but the thick, jungle air slowed her movement. It was as if trudging through the waters surrounding the campsite.

When she awoke, Meridia smiled at her. Jorga was sleeping with his head in her lap and she was idly petting his mane. Ellemayne had snuggled close to Sanja as she slept. She pushed her huge head underneath the Tauren's hand.

Meridia mouthed some silent, Darnassian greeting when she noticed that Sanja was awake. Not recognizing what it could be, Sanja mouthed _Good morning,_ in reply.

Kazbo's face looked more normal today. He sat beside the fire and warmed his hands around Tanavar's mug. He sipped at it between satisfied smiles.

"May I?" Sanja whispered, trying not to wake her brother. The Gnome shared the mug, but she nearly spit out the surprisingly bitter drink.

"If you do not care for the taste," he said quietly, taking the mug back, "I'll keep it from going to waste." Sanja sensed that if anything, he seemed relieved that he would not have to share it.

When it was all gone, he returned the mug to the Night Elf. "I don't suppose I could have a... little more java?" Kazbo asked sheepishly.

# # #

"I wish you luck on your journey," Tanavar said to the Gnome. He made a deliberate effort to look Sanja in the eye. "Elune-adore..." a pause before explaining, "May Elune watch over you, all the way back to Mulgore."

"Thank you. May the wind always be at your back," she replied. "I hope your meeting with the princess goes well."

"Now you be careful," Meridia said to Jorga. She knelt in front of him and buttoned his vest, even though he preferred to leave it open. "The Stonetalon Mountains can be a dangerous place."

She frowned for a moment before reaching in her pack. "I want you to take this," she said. Meridia removed a perfectly tanned hide and draped it over the small boy.

"Wow!" Jorga gasped. The skin was from some sort of huge cat that he had never seen before. The thick, orange fur was decorated with stripes of black, and had a belly that faded to white. The paws, tail, and head were still in place.

Sanja was confident that whoever had prepared this hide was certainly an expert.

"But your mother..." Tanavar started to say.

"...will be happy to know that her gift is keeping a young boy warm," she finished for him.

Meridia draped the hide over Jorga like a cloak. She adjusted the cat's head over Jorga's and the cat's paws over his hands. "Oh goodness!" she giggled. "It's a tiger!"

"Rawr!" Jorga growled. He swiped a floppy paw at Kazbo. "Rawr!" he growled at his sister. The boy tried to pounce on Ellemayne, but the jungle cat seemed far more interested in being scratched. She butted the boy with her head and knocked the small Tauren on his tail.

Sanja took Meridia's hands in hers and lowered her forehead to them. "Thank you, Meridia. You have shown us such generosity, that I could never repay."

Sanja lifted her head and the druid looked her in the eye for the first time since they had met. Whether it was magic, or just a sense of empathy they shared, she could feel the strange woman's thoughts. _That tiny vest will give him no warmth this winter,_ she seemed to say. _Although I hate to see it destroyed, please use this pelt in whatever way you must to keep him safe._

Sanja tried not to think about cutting the beautiful pelt up to make clothing, even though she knew such a drastic action would hard to avoid.

# # #

Supercharged with two cups of java, Kazbo hiked with surprising energy. He talked non-stop about anything – and everything – that entered his head.

Even though she had put the pelt away in her pack, Jorga continued to pretend that he was a tiger. He stalked. He growled. He pounced.

Between the two, very distracted boys, their progress was slow; but Sanja didn't truly mind. They were in no rush, and for the first time since they saw the balloon crash, she felt that everything was going to be all right. She couldn't help but smile.

"Wow!" Jorga gasped suddenly.

Sanja and Kazbo ran up a small hill to catch up with the boy. They turned, and the trio stared out across a large, green lake. There, only a hundred yards away, shambled a gigantic figure.

The Ancient was perhaps forty feet tall, and he trudged slowly across the water's shallow edge. He looked like a mighty tree, but his legs rooted and uprooted themselves with each slow step. His face seemed sad and his outstretched limbs looked almost angry. A long, thick beard of ivy swung slowly back and forth as he swayed.

Sanja and Jorga knelt and lowered their heads. Feeling out of place, Kazbo knelt too, but he couldn't take his eyes off of the spirit of the wild.

The Tauren began to sing. At first it was just a long slow sound they shared, punctuated with rhythmic drumming against the swampy ground.

Oh... oh... _slap slap_

Oh... oh... _slap slap_

The Ancient started swaying in place, its face looked up to the sky. Kazbo wanted to ask the children what it could be doing, but he didn't want to interrupt. They seemed very serious all of a sudden.

Forgive us, forgive us, mighty spirit of forest,

Forgive us, forgive us, _slap slap_

We mean you no harm, we mean you no ill,

Our failings are our weakness, _slap slap_

Tiny sparks of light began to spin around the towering creature, and then ghostly leaves of dark green joined in to the dance. "That looks like the spell..." Kazbo started to whisper, and then feeling ashamed of his interruption, he closed his mouth and returned to watching the figure across the lake.

The birds in the trees hushed reverently, and the air filled with strange scents. Kazbo smelled cinnamon and wildflowers, and then freshly cut hay. There was a strange buzzing that built and built until it was the wings of a thousand birds.

We love your trees and the fruits that they bear,

We thank you for the shade that they give, _slap slap_

The life that you give them, you give to us too,

And for this we clap our thanks, _slap slap_

The song faded out over the water and the trio watched in silence as the Ancient completed casting his healing spell. The leaves faded away, and although they sat a tremendous distance away, all three felt a gigantic wave of vertigo pass through them.

"Whoa!" gasped Jorga. He reached out to Sanja's shoulder to steady himself.

Ever so slowly, a small stand of trees began to rise from the swampy banks. In just moments, the Ancient was surrounded, and the trees continued to grow. The being shambled away into the forest, and finally out of sight.

"Look! Look!" Kazbo shouted in surprise. Tiny clover and wildflowers were sprouting all around them. Out of thin air, deep green moss was forming on their clothes.

"Wow," Jorga said again. He scratched some of the moss off of his pants with a fingernail and watched it regrow. "That's neat."

The birds began to sing again and the trio just sat there listening to the music. A feeling of well-being washed over them.

"So _that_ was a..." Kazbo said.

Sanja and Jorga nodded.

"Do you think we could... perhaps go... and talk to it?"

Sanja and Jorga shook their heads.

"They are sacred beings that hold power over life itself. Just being near one can cure disease, or mend broken bones," Sanja explained.

"Only the most valiant warriors have the courage to try to speak to an Ancient. The elders say they hold grudges against every race for what they have done to the trees. Well, every race other than the Night Elves, I suppose."

Kazbo thought about his home, back in Gnomeregan. He thought about his furniture of dark-stained cherry, the oaken bookcases, and the library of words printed on paper sheets. Although he had never – personally – cut down a tree, he could understand why the Ancients might not like Gnomes.

"But surely they do not hold a grudge against the Tauren," he said. "You live in harmony with nature. So many of the archdruids are Tauren..."

"We cook our food over wood fires. We make our weapons of wood. Wooden poles hold up our tents," she explained. "And they are nearly immortal... Who knows what they have seen Tauren do in the past? What if they had seen a Tauren start a forest fire? Or chop down a tree? Or cook acorns? The elders say that they hold entire tribes responsible for the actions of every individual."

"Well, that doesn't seem very fair," Kazbo grumbled.

"Not every people think in the same way that you or I might. Surely you have been surprised by our differences. I know I have."

He nodded, reluctantly.

"Do you think you could you hold a conversation with someone," Sanja asked, "if you thought they had cooked their food over a pile of burning Gnomes?"

Kazbo shivered at the thought and the silence stretched.

"I think we must be near the edge of the oasis," Sanja volunteered. "If they are using their powers here, then perhaps they are protecting the swamp from the desert... or trying to expand it further."

"So you think there's more of them?" Kazbo gasped.

The girl nodded. "There's no way a single Ancient could do all of this. We are witnessing something very important going on."

"Are you certain?" he asked.

Sanja smiled and shifted to one hip so she could face the Gnome. She picked some of the small flowers and stuck them in her mane. "Suppose I went to Gnomeregan and told you that something very important was happening in Desolace, and that I needed you to go there... Would you go?"

Kazbo's eyes opened wide as he imagined being back in his library, a whole world away. He thought about how easy his life had been before he came; the cozy bed, the fine meals, and the company of his family. In his mind he compared it to the heat, the bug bites, the hunger, and isolation. He swallowed hard. "Yes, I would, Sanja. I don't think you would ask such a thing if it were not important."

She nodded and smiled. "And if I told you that you needed to bring ten other Gnomes with you, could you manage it?"

His mouth hung open slightly. "That would be a lot to ask. It would be harder to convince others who did not know you. Much harder."

"What about a hundred? A thousand other Gnomes?"

Now he just looked at her.

"The Ancients did not just come here because someone asked them," she said. "I don't pretend to understand their reasons, but something very important is happening here."


	13. Chapter 13

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 13**

"So, do the Tauren worship the Ancients?" Kazbo asked.

Sanja shook her head. "Tauren worship the sun and the soil. They worship nature. The Ancients are part of that, of course, but they aren't gods," she explained. "I think that if the Ancients really were gods, then there would be no people at all."

"In all the books I have read, I've never seen any on Tauren lore," the Gnome said. "I find it so fascinating, but I guess no one has ever written it down before."

Jorga had plucked some newly-grown grass stems and was blowing on them to try and get them to hum.

"I wish you could hear my favorite story about the Ancients," Sanja said.

"Will you sing it?"

Sanja shook her head. "To do it right, the entire tribe has to participate. You sing it in the dark, around the fire, at the end of a celebration. They beat on drums, and everyone dances in a circle around the fire, and they spin and spin."

She rolled over on her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows. "Before the celebration, everyone gathers up a shtumanialo. That's a bundle of thin sticks, but you roll green leaves inside the bundle, and you tie them up tight. Then when you dance, you cradle the shtumanialo in front of you."

Sanja smiled as she thought back to the utankan festivals. "You see, the bundle is supposed to represent a dead body."

"A dead..." Kazbo gasped, "dead body?"

Sanja nodded. "You see, the story is about an Ancient that sees the wood smoke rising from a Tauren camp. So she comes out of the forest and stomps on the village to put out the flames. She kills a bunch of people before storming back off into the woods.

"Normally, Tauren bury their dead, but in this story the survivors build this gigantic bonfire, and they burn the bodies instead. So, at this point in the song, all the dancers toss their shtumanialo on the fire, and it builds into a huge blaze. And of course, all the green leaves burn, and the whole camp fills with smoke."

Kazbo stared at her blankly. "That sounds like an awful story! The Ancient punishes the Tauren for burning wood, so the Tauren burn more wood?"

Sanja sighed. She picked a tiny daisy and flicked it at the Gnome. "Most Tauren stories are ironic, Kazbo. They're supposed to teach a lesson. The purpose of the story is to show that there's no point in being angry about something that can't be changed. Tauren need fire to survive, so why be miserable about it? You should think about things you can change, instead."

"Someday I'm going to go talk to one," Jorga said, suddenly.

"You're going to talk to an Ancient?" Kazbo asked.

The boy nodded, without looking up.

"Oh, really?" Sanja turned to look at her brother. "And what are you going to say to an Ancient?"

The trio stood and walked along the shore, away from where they had seen the creature go.

"I'll say, 'I'm Jorga!'"

Sanja laughed. "I doubt an Ancient would even notice you. He'd probably just step on you and squash you flat."

"Nuh uh!" Jorga retorted. "I'm not always going to be short. Someday I'll be tall! I'll be... a hundred and six feet tall!"

Sanja bobbed her head in disbelief. "Oh really?"

"Uh huh! And then I'll step on the Ancient." He slapped the palm of one hand down on the other. "And I'll squash him flat."

She shook her increasingly unkept mane. "No. If you stepped on an Ancient, it would be like... like a giant splinter in your hoof! Don't you think that would be awful?"

"No!" Jorga pointed at his sister. "Because _I'm_ going to have metal hooves."

"What? Since when are you going to have metal hooves?"

"Uh huh!" Jorga nodded his entire head. "I'm gonna' have giant metal hooves that Kazbo makes for me!"

"Oh really..." Sanja said, as if she understood. She turned and addressed the Gnome directly. "Do you make a lot of giant, metal hooves?"

Kazbo gasped in surprise. "Er, um... no... the metal hooves I make for Jorga will be unique."

# # #

They reached the edge of the oasis in the late afternoon. The three stared out across the vast desert and unanimously agreed to camp inside the trees for one final night. Although no one would miss the humidity, they had enjoyed having an abundance of water. All three hated being thirsty.

"I wish we could follow the edge of the oasis all the way back to Mulgore," Jorga said. "Hiking across the desert is easier, and then we could go into the swamp whenever we wanted to refill the water skin."

"Yeah," the other two agreed.

# # #

The trio traveled north, across the baking desert. The sun was as relentless as it had been before, but at least they were able to find more streams here. The hike – so far – had not been as bad as they feared.

"There!" Kazbo shouted. He ran ahead to a strange, short, tent pole that someone had planted next to a fork in the road.

When the others caught up, he gestured frantically to one of the slabs of wood that had been affixed to the top of the pole. "Can you read the symbols carved into the top sign, Jorga?"

The boy looked at the Gnome and then back to the sign. He seemed pretty unenthusiastic.

"There, on the left, is a circle with three dots underneath it. What sound is that?"

"It's a..." Sanja started to say, but Kazbo shushed her.

"I want Jorga to read it."

Her brother scratched his chin for a moment. "That's the 'my' sound, right?"

"No, no, no," Kazbo corrected him. "_Three_ dots under the circle."

"Oh, oh! I meant the 'ny' sound."

"Very good!"

"So, it must say 'Nijel's Point'."

Kazbo sighed in exasperation. "Yes, it does, but you're supposed to read it, not guess what it says. See how the sign goes to a point on the right side? That means that if you follow the road on the right, it will lead you to Nijel's Point."

The trio followed the road with their eyes off into the distance. Although it was difficult to judge distance in the desert, it looked like about a mile before the path lead up into a curved channel in the rocks. Tiny blue pennants waved from either side of the canyon. Flickers of light reflected off polished metal beneath each of the flag poles.

"Sentries," Sanja said, "stationed next to the Alliance banners."

The boys nodded.

Sanja headed off down the opposite fork. "I'm going to sleep so much better, knowing that Nijel's Point is behind us."

She turned about when she realized that no one was following. "What?"

"We have to go there," Kazbo said, refusing to take another step. "We have to go to Nijel's Point."

"Are you mad?" Sanja gasped. "The sentries would kill Jorga and me on sight! And even if they let us pass, the townspeople themselves would string us up."

"Well, Theodore was going to take you there..." he said in a dejected voice. Even if Sanja hadn't interrupted, he would have realized that it was a pretty weak argument.

"Yeah, as _slaves_!"

"Well, you could pretend to be my slaves," Kazbo said, his face brightening.

"I will _never_ be _anyone's_ slave!"

Jorga spoke up, but only slightly. "I want to..."

"And you're not taking Jorga into a town where everyone wants to kill him," Sanja said. She waved her hands across her chest. "No."

"Just for _pretend_, I said!" Kazbo put his tiny hands on his hips. "Then we could go and get supplies for the journey."

The three stared at one another. Jorga looked like he had something to say, but that he wasn't yet ready to cross his big sister.

Sanja's mind was awhirl with a mass of dark thoughts. She imagined getting separated from the tiny man and being attacked by villagers. She visualized Theodore hitting Kazbo over the head and taking the two as his slaves. Without Kazbo to protect them, they'd be helpless in the enemy city.

Kazbo finally broke the silence. "You can't tell me that there aren't things you wish we had. What if it was a Tauren village?"

"It's _not_."

"I know it's not, but what if it had been?" Kazbo tugged on her vest to get her to look at him. "Aren't there things you'd want to get?"

Sanja hung her head. Part of her was afraid; afraid of the danger surrounded the Alliance town. But other parts of her mind were focused on much more subtle dangers. "An axe."

"An axe?"

Sanja nodded. "Yes, we need an axe if we're going to make it through the winter." She kicked a small rock with her hoof and sent it flying. "Gathering firewood out here is easy because we don't stay in the same spot for very long. But if we try to wait out the winter in a mountain camp, then we're going to burn through all the dead fall.

"We have be able to cut down trees for firewood and to make shelter."

In silence, the boys opened their eyes up wide. They hadn't really thought about running out of firewood during the winter.

The moment stretched and Kazbo broke the protracted silence. His voice seemed squeakier than normal. "Is that all?"

"No, I'd try to get a map and another water skin too."

Kazbo nodded and slapped his hands together. It was a less-than-impressive little clap. "Fine, it's decided. I'll go to Nijel's Point and try to find those things. Just wait here and I'll bring them right back."

"No!" Sanja shouted. "Splitting up is a really bad idea. You said you'd watch out for us!"

Jorga's eyes looked large and tragic. "Don't go..."

"I am watching out for you," the little man tried to reassure the children. "Getting us an axe will help keep everyone safe, and a map will keep us from getting lost. Just wait here."

"No! No, no, no, no! There's no way we're waiting here any longer," she insisted. She pointed down the right fork. "Anyone who walks on that road is _Alliance_. It's not safe for us here. Don't you remember how Tanavar and Meridia acted before you told them to stop?"

"Well, if you go on, I'll never catch up with you," Kazbo said. "Especially not if I'm carrying a bunch of stuff."

In frustration, Sanja rubbed her face with her hands. "Do you think you could find the campsite we used last night?"

"Well, sure," Kazbo replied. "It's only about an hour south of here."

Sanja noticed then how much Kazbo had changed. She marveled that he could now talk about an hour's walk and use the word "only". "Okay, then Jorga and I will head back to the campsite. We'll wait for you there."

"Give me three days," Kazbo said with confidence.

"_What?_ Three _days_?" the Tauren gasped in unison.

"If we're going to do this, then we should do it right!" The Gnome's manner was different too. He no longer seemed to be the helpless, little bookworm that they had first met. "Who knows what might be available to us? What if I could get the parts to make another balloon?" He smiled hopefully. "If we could fly over the mountains, then we wouldn't have to wait until next summer to get you home."

Jorga's mouth opened wide, but he didn't speak.

"You mean a balloon like the one you crashed?" Sanja grumbled, but without much conviction.

"All I want is for you to give me a chance to look. If there's nothing useful there, then I'll just get what I can and I'll come right back." He reached up and took one of Sanja's and one of Jorga's hands in his tiny hands. "But if there was a way to get you home _this year_, well, wouldn't that be worth the look?"

Sanja sighed and Jorga fidgeted with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. "Okay, three days. If we don't see you in three days, then we're going on."

"Deal struck," Kazbo said with a smile.

# # #

The children sat silently at the campfire.

It had taken a long time to start a fire without the use of Kazbo's magic. Even with the bone-dry wood, it had taken a tremendous amount of work. Sanja was intent on keeping it burning continuously until the Gnome returned; just so she wouldn't have to repeat the effort.

It was too early in the afternoon to cook supper, and the day had been upsetting enough that it had thrown all of the regular chores askew. Sanja had taken out the rope she had made for tanning rabbit hides, but just couldn't muster the energy to work on them.

A tremendous wave of loneliness crashed over them both.

"Why so sad, little cow?"

The Tauren jumped to their hooves in shock. Sitting beside them was Theodore. No one had heard him approach or sit. He grinned up at them with a few too many teeth.

"It was so nice of you to come all the way out here by yourself," he said. He fidgeted with some object in his hands. "I would have hated to drag you all this way."

"How did you find us?" Jorga bleated.

Theodore grinned wide and tapped his nose with a finger. "The beast had no problem picking up a cattle trail."

Sanja's rage erupted from her shock. "What did you do to Kazbo?"

The rogue feigned innocence. "Do? I didn't do anything to the little fool." He batted his eyes up at her. "Why, I saw him running around Nijel's Point without you, and I just knew you had to be nearby. And here you are!"

Sanja reached out and pulled her brother close. She pushed him behind her body and then took a slow step backward.

"Oh, come now. Is that any way to treat an old friend?" He cocked his head at her. "Look, I even bought you some pretty jewelry," he said. "Here," he tossed the object toward them and it clanked to rest in front of her hooves, "Why don't you try them on?"

A cold chill ran down Sanja's spine. In the dust before her, lay a pair of iron manacles.


	14. Chapter 14

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 14**

Her expression defiant, Sanja refused to take her eyes off of the rogue. "Get the pack," she whispered to her brother. "We're leaving."

"If you don't put the manacles on yourself," Theodore said. "Then the beast will do it for you. And he's not going to be gentle about it."

Jorga dashed around Sanja, his arms outstretched.

"No! Don't!" she screamed.

The boy shouted, "You leave my sister alone; you big, meany!"

In a single motion, Theodore took one of the daggers from his hip, slashed the boy, and slid the knife back into its scabbard. His eyes, like his expression, never shifted.

A bloodied Jorga stumbled backwards, his eyes wide. He did not cry out.

Sanja grabbed the calf and pulled him back, away from the Gilnean. "Are you okay?" she whispered. "Let me see your arm."

He didn't resist. Jorga wasn't rag-doll limp, but he seemed too stunned to react. The black fur of his left arm was damp with blood. It didn't gush, but it certainly did ooze.

Theodore had slashed him from the back of his wrist to his elbow. The wound was deep, but oblique; it had peeled back a couple inches of skin without penetrating too deeply into the muscle itself.

In the back of her mind, Sanja wondered if Theodore had done that intentionally, or if the blade had simply glanced off the bone. _Is he going to try and sell Jorga as well?_ she wondered. If so, he was obviously not worried about the condition he was in.

She peeled away the boy's unbuttoned vest and wrapped it gently around his forearm. She made sure it was just tight enough to hold the wound closed, but not so tight as to cut off circulation to his hand.

"I'm waiting," Theodore said, a touch of frustration in his voice.

"I need you to hold it here. Keep some pressure on it," she whispered to Jorga. He complied meekly. "How do you feel?"

"It hurts," he whimpered. There were tears in his eyes, but he was not sobbing.

"I bet it does." She wanted to hug him, but was afraid to move his arm. She kissed him gently on the forehead. "You were very brave, but let me take care of this. Then I'll get you all fixed up. I promise."

Sanja stood and turned slowly to face the smaller man. Her blood was boiling, but she refused to let rage make decisions for her. _What are my options?_she asked herself. _Run? Fight? Beg? Negotiate? Go quietly?_

She had always said that she'd rather die than become a slave like Elizabeth, but it was no longer just about herself. What would happen to Jorga if she wasn't here to tend to his wounds? The injury didn't look life-threatening, but could he care for himself without her? Kazbo would be back in a few days, but would the tiny man have enough sense to tend the wound properly?

_Kazbo!_ she thought. If the rogue took her back to Nijel's Point, then the Gnome could turn him into a sheep...

_No, it was a terrible plan_, she admonished herself. That left Jorga behind and counted on the little mage standing up to Theodore. Even if he could beat the rogue in a fight, which she doubted, it would just look like a robbery to the villagers. With her in shackles and him an outlaw, they'd never get out of town alive.

_Always play to your strengths,_ she heard in her head. Her father had said that so many times before, that it amazed her that it wasn't her first thought.

_What are my strengths? Stamina, strength, and self-control,_ she decided.

Although she was certain that she could run farther than Theodore, she could never run faster than him; and she could not abandon her brother. Strength would do her little good, also. The beast was stronger, and he was the real problem. She had to stop thinking about the puny human and focus on the beast. He was the one calling the shots.

"That's it," she said to the little man. "I'm done dealing with you."

Theodore's grin slid slowly from his face. "What?"

"If the beast is the reason that you're treating us so terribly, then _he's_ the problem," she declared. "I'm only dealing with him."

A hint of a terrible grin returned to Theodore's face. "Oh, I don't think you want that."

Sanja pulled her bone knife out and held it in her hands for a moment. The rogue didn't even flinch. Why should he? He knew he had the advantage there. He had skill, he had armor, and he had two knives made of metal. _Don't play his game,_ she reminded herself, _make him face you your way_.

Sanja set the knife down gently on her backpack.

"Not talking to you," she said dismissively. "I'm going to teach _him_ a lesson. No weapons, no armor, no magic, no tricks, no nothing. Just fur versus fur. And when I'm done, you're never going to bother me or my family again."

Theodore just stared, visibly stunned, so Sanja started unbuttoning her vest.

"You're kidding, right?"

She replied only with a stoney stare.

He chortled at her bravery. "Okay... and _when_ the beast wins... what then?"

She hadn't stopped to consider it. "Well... then I guess I'd be in no position to stop him from dragging me to Nijel's Point. Would I?" It was a statement of fact, not a promise. She wasn't going to go quietly. She intended to fight him every step of the way, if it came to that.

The girl removed her vest, folded it carefully, and set it down on top of her knife.

The rogue stared at her small, furry breasts for a moment and giggled nervously like a yearling. She put her fists on her hips.

Theodore made an effort to control himself. An exaggerated shrug and he began unbuckling the black leather that protected his chest. "If that's what you want, little cow... but you're going to regret it."

Sanja untied her trousers and sat down in the dust. In the past four weeks, the buckskin had grown tight around her hips and were now increasingly hard to remove. She laid on her shoulders and lifted her butt up in an effort to slide them down.

Theodore was staring at her and grinning. She knew it wouldn't last, but for now, he looked both stupid and harmless. His chest was thin and pale. His muscles were not even well-defined. A sad, thin excuse for brown hair stretched between his nipples. The most impressive thing on his pale skin were the four parallel scars that stretched from one shoulder to the opposite kidney.

_Good,_ she thought, _I hope it hurt a lot._

She slid her pants off and stood. She stared at him while she carefully folded the leather.

He was still wearing his leg armor. She wasn't too worried about the protection it afforded him, but he still had boots and hardened leather covered in small spikes. She didn't want him to have that advantage.

She swallowed a lump in her throat. _You can do this,_ she reassured herself. She started to slide her small clothes down. "Well?"

His grin faltered for a moment and he shrugged. He unbuckled his belt and sat down to unlace his boots.

She folded her undergarments and tucked them away, underneath her trousers. After doing so, she saw how silly she was being. _Who cares if he sees your small clothes,_ she asked herself, _when your triangle of long fur is exposed?_

Theodore grinned at her with too many teeth. "I'm liking this idea of yours more and more..." he said. He slid his small clothes away and shifted into his beast form. "...little cow," he added for good measure. His voice turned deep and terrifying.

Sanja was repulsed at the sight of the creature. It stared, it drooled, and worst of all, his pink tip extended beyond the end of its sheath. _Yuck!_ she thought. _How can he even think about mating at a time like this?_

In a single heartbeat, the creature leapt on top of her.

But this time she had been ready. She rolled onto her back and used her momentum to kick up hard with both hooves and throw him off of her. She was fairly certain that she had caught him at the base of his large ribcage.

In a flash, the two fighters were back up. He had his clawed hands on his knees while he reeled from the unexpected pain. Sanja pressed the attack and kicked high at the beast's lowered jaw.

At the last possible moment, Theodore backed away. He put up his hands to block additional attacks.

"You bitch!" he barked in a gravelly voice as he struggled to regain his breath. He coughed. "I _was_ just going to humiliate you. I was going to march you back to Nijel's Point wearing only the manacles, but _now_..." He grinned wide and slowly forced himself to stand upright. "Now I'm going to have to hurt you."

Sanja grinned too when she saw his teeth. Although not coated, there was clearly bright red blood in his mouth. That could only mean one thing; she had broken one of his ribs and the sharp bone had punctured a lung. If she could just draw the fight out, the lung would continue to fill with blood and his strength would start to fade.

_Which side? Which side?_ she asked herself. She had seen the bulls brawl many times before. They always turned their wounds away from the attacker to try and protect themselves from further injury.

The beast moved in close and swiped at her with his claws. Again, she was ready. She ducked deep underneath the attack and pulled a tightly balled fist up from the dusty ground. She landed it hard and square at the bottom of ribcage, on his left side.

The beast cried out with a high-pitched yelp.

She had hurt him, but not nearly as bad as she had hoped. _The broken rib must be on his right side._

Then he was on top of her. He grabbed both of her wrists and dropped his weight down hard on top of her. He pinned her to the ground.

"You..." he said. His awful breath was on her face. She could clearly smell the blood now. "Are... feisty." He laid down on top of her and pressed his hot muzzle to her ear. "I like feisty women."

Sanja dropped her head to the side and with an explosive twist, tried to bring one of her short horns up into his eye.

She felt it hit bone.

Now the beast yelped in true pain.

Ivory flashed and he bit down hard on her nose. Pain exploded through her face and her eyes blurred with tears.

He snarled at her – a low and jagged sound. "Don't do that again..."

She wanted to see his face, but couldn't focus through the tears. Had she cost him his eye?

"I like feisty women," he repeated, "but I don't think it's a good trait in a slave."

"Get off of me!" She struggled against his grip and tried to buck him off of her hips, but he was just too strong and heavy.

"I think I'm going to have to break you," he growled. She looked up at him. "Yes, how appropriate. I'll break you like a _cowboy_ breaks a wild horse." He grinned evilly at her.

"I'll make you _my_ slave; and I'll teach you to beg."

"I'll never beg for anything from you!" she shouted defiantly.

The beast dropped his furry chest down on top of Sanja's wounded nose, pinning her head in place and shooting tendrils of pain-lightning up into her brain. He curled his neck around and ever so gently took one of her long ears in his teeth.

She tried to twitch it away, but he would not let it go.

"You think not? What if I start gnawing off one of your pretty little ears?" He paused and let the horrible thought sink in. "I'd start out at the tip and slowly work my way down until you could feel my fangs scraping against your skull. You know I'd do it, too... Don't you think you'd beg me to stop?"

She knew she would too, but didn't say a word.

After what seemed like hours, he lifted his weight off of her nose and positioned his face in front of hers. "Yes, that's what I'll have to do. I'll make you my pet. And once you've learned how to act like a slave, then – and only then – will I sell you off."

He put his ears to the side in a stupid, wolfy grin. "I think I'll call your first lesson, 'I can do anything I want to you, and there's _nothing_ you can do about it.'"

And with that, he let go of her right wrist and grabbed her right breast – fiercely, as if it were a fish that were trying to wriggle free. He opened his jaws and then bit the breast he held, hard; but unlike with her nose, he did not release it right away.

Sanja cried out as the beast's fangs cut deep into her flesh. He just held her there for what seemed like an eternity. He didn't try to rip it away, but neither did he release her.

When he finally let go, he began lapping at the blood that oozed up through her soft fur. She grabbed at his shoulder and tried to push him away, but he just licked and licked. She wanted him to leave her wounded breast alone, but the more she struggled, the more excited he seemed to get.

He started thrusting up against her, jabbing her in the thighs.

"Stop it!" she cried out.

Then he let go of her left wrist and grabbed her left breast. "Don't!" she shouted, but his teeth were already digging into her skin.

More lightning bolts of pain.

More lapping of blood.

More wildly thrusting against her.

Sanja dug her hooves into his hips and tried to push him away, but it wasn't helping. She put her right arm around the back of his neck and grabbed his right shoulder with both of her hands. She tried to peel him away from her.

He thrust up inside her and she cried out again.

"Oh, you don't like that, huh?" he whispered in her ear. "That's such a shame. I see a lot more of this in your future." He thrust himself up, deeper inside her and gave her a long slow lick from the side of her nose down to the side of her throat.

"I'm going to teach you to beg for more of this, little cow." She shook her head, but he only laughed.

"Oh yes! Yes, you will. If you're too proud... If you refuse to beg for it, then I will do... _horrible_ things to you." He paused, either to let the thought sink in or to fantasize about how he would torture her, she didn't know. "Why, I may even pay a healer to repair some of those things, just so that I can do them once more..."


	15. Chapter 15

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 15**

Theodore pulled himself out a little ways and then thrust upward just as hard as he could manage. She felt like he was going to rip her apart.

"How does that feel, little cow?" he whispered in her ear. His naked body was flat against her own, touching hers in the most awful of ways.

A wave of misery crashed over the girl. Sanja felt alone and abandoned, ashamed and in pain; doomed. The horrible, horrible musty smell of the beast was all over her. It smothered her wounded nose just like his body was smothering her body.

But then, deep in the darkest misery she had ever felt, she saw a bright hot glimmer of hope. Small at first, it grew bigger, and brighter, until she nearly laughed out loud.

This was not the end! This was the opportunity that she had been waiting for.

Theodore had been a fool to let his guard down like this and she had been a fool not to seize the chance more quickly. She had had the advantage all along. The rogue wanted her alive; she was of no use to him dead. His hands were the ones that were tied, not hers.

She stopped pushing him away. Her right arm was still around the back of his neck and her left hand was on his shoulder. She pulled him close, lowered her chin to her chest, and then with a sudden burst of strength, she twisted her head around and drove her right horn up to where she figured his right eye must be.

She felt it hit bone once more, but this time the impact was softer, as if it had hit the eyeball first, or perhaps crushed the thin bone of his eye socket.

The beast shrieked in pain and tried to pull away, but she would not let him. Oh no, not this time. She held him tight with her arms and wrapped only her right leg behind the small of his back. She afforded him only a single exit.

He peeled his weight off of her and opened up a gap between her body and where she knew his broken rib had to be.

She would not miss this opportunity a second time.

In a flash, her left knee came up hard and connected with broken bone.

He gasped, frozen in pain and caught between inhale and exhale; but she continued to fight. She put her left forearm across his throat and locked her ankles together across the small of his back. She was never going to let him escape.

"How does that feel?" she whispered to him as she squeezed her arms together. She grabbed her left elbow with her right hand.

He struggled.

He gurgled and coughed a disgusting, wet sound.

She squeezed with her arms and legs, working hard to force the breath out of him. Worked to deny him another breath.

The beast went absolutely wild. He raked her with his claws and struck her with his fists; blows fell upon her like summer rain, but she refused to budge. She was determined to hold on until the last ounce of her strength was gone. The impacts barely even registered in her brain.

He punched and clawed and punched some more. He tumbled around in the dust, kicking up a blinding cloud; but his strength was clearly fading. He grabbed at her arms and tried to peel them from his throat, but he couldn't seem to get the leverage he needed. It was as if his arms were better suited for slashing and grabbing someone out in front of him, rather than peeling someone away from his throat.

She bit his face – not to hurt him, but as one more way to cling on. She dug in her thick, hoof-like nails.

He lifted his weight off of her, but she clung to him like a parasite.

He tried to crawl away, but it was futile. He simply took her with him.

Without warning, his strength abandoned him, and he collapsed down on top of her.

She let go of him only with her teeth. "I promised you," she whispered, exertion clear in her voice, "that you would never come near me or my family again."

She let him lay there; on top of her, inside of her, for what seemed like hours. She squeezed his throat just as hard as she could until he stopped even trying to breathe. Only then did his body go limp.

She sighed her first breath of relief, but refused to release the beast's throat.

She unbuckled her heels from behind his back and drove a hoof down into the desert sand. With all the strength she could muster, she rolled the beast over onto its back.

Sanja panted with exertion, and the insides of her ears flushed red; but still she held its throat. She stared into the creature's one remaining eye. It looked glassy and lifeless.

"How do I know that you're really dead?" she whispered.

# # #

Jorga lay on his side, curled up in a ball.

"How are you feeling, kiddo?"

The boy opened his eyes and looked slowly up at his sister. Beside being a mess of cuts and scratches, she was standing tall and holding her arms loosely at her sides. A large rock in her right hand was smeared with blood and small bits of brain. She let it drop into the desert sand with a thud.

"Why are you naked?"

Sanja covered herself with her hands. "It's... complicated," she said. She started getting dressed. How she wished she could wash the creature's musky scent from her fur. "Don't tell Mom... or anyone... okay?"

Jorga nodded weakly and closed his eyes. "Is he... gone?"

"Yeah, he's gone."

She returned to the boy's side; his breath smelled awful. The corners of his mouth were crusty.

"I threw up," he whispered, sounding both sick and ashamed.

Sanja nodded and gently stroked his mane. "I think I would have too, if he had stabbed me."

She helped her brother sit upright and gave him a small drink from the water skin.

"You know I'm going to have to sew your arm up, right?"

Jorga nodded weakly. "Is it going to scar?"

"Are you kidding? It's going to be a _huge_ scar." She kissed his nose. It felt dry and cold. "When we get home, everyone's going to see it and know just how brave you are. All the cows are going to want to hang all over you."

Jorga made a sour face. "Yuck."

"I'll tell everyone in the entire utankan that you took on an Alliance rogue, all by yourself."

Jorga shrugged gloomily. "No one's going to believe you."

"Oh no?" She reached over to Theodore's pile of abandoned armor and grabbed the rogue's daggers. "Where else will they think you got this?"

The boy's eyes opened wide. "Whoa... two metal knives?"

She frowned at him. "_One_ metal knife... I think I earned one of them, myself."

Jorga shrugged. He held the knife in his good hand and turned it over slowly. "Wow... This is even better than the one Bo has. Don't ya' think?"

Sanja sighed in relief, happy to see the boy smile again.

"It's not very shiny though," he added. "What's all the goo on the blade?"

"Dunno'," she said idly. She rubbed the blade's oily coating with her primary finger and gave it a sniff.

The scent seemed familiar. It was something she had smelled once, a long time ago; something pungent and cloying. It tickled her sinuses and brain.

She remembered the smell of the dark soil. It was a small, purple flower, with a bright red stem, and the roots... when she pushed the dirt away from the roots with her digging tool, they had the exact same smell.

Mom had showed it to her... long, long ago... _Sniff, look, but don't touch..._ she wouldn't let her touch it... she warned her to stay away...

_Maiden's anguish._

# # #

"We have to go," Sanja said, hurriedly stuffing all of their possessions in the backpack. "We have to go, now."

Jorga opened his eyes for a moment and then closed them again. "I don't feel so great. Can't we just stay here and wait for Kazbo?"

"No. We have to go, now."

_But where?_ she wondered. The nearest adults were those in Nijel's Point, and she knew what the sentries would do if they just walked up to them. _But we need help! Surely they would help out someone in real need..._

_No. Even if they would help, could they?_ Her brow furrowed. _We don't need an adult. What we need is an antidote._

She paced around the fire, clenching her fists. _What was it? What was it? Willow? Willow bark? Willow leaves? No. It definitely had willow in it, but it was something mushy. A poultice._

Sanja growled at herself. How could she have forgotten something so important? Her mom had showed her how to make it once, long, long ago.

"Willow reed!" she shouted in relief. "We need to get you a poultice made of willow reed." She took a deep breath and smiled.

But the smile quickly faded as she looked around the campsite. There were no reeds here. Every stream, every oasis they had seen in the desert completely lacked reeds.

Her heart started pounding in her ears. _No willow reeds in the desert! Even the people living at Nijel's Point probably wouldn't have them._

In a blind panic, Sanja started rifling through Theodore's possessions. She stuck her nose into every item, hoping desperately for the bright grapefruit-rind scent of willow reed pulp.

She discarded a packet of fishhooks and very fine string.

She discarded his purse and ignored the useless gold and silver coins that spilled across the sand.

She found the maiden's anguish. It was a small pouch, still half-full of the reddish-brown paste. She hurled the bag across the desert in frustration.

_How could he travel with poisoned knives and not carry an antidote? Didn't he worry about accidentally cutting himself?_

She sank to her knees.

_I don't think he cared about anything._

# # #

"Come on, Jorga. Get up. We're going back to the swamp. There will be some plants there that will make you feel better."

She had to give him credit, the boy did try to stand. He planted his hooves and tried to lift himself over them, but they wouldn't hold any weight.

"You can do it," she pleaded.

"I can't. Why can't I stand up?" he whined.

"That happens sometimes, when people get cut," she reassured him. "Your body is busy repairing the damage, so all your strength..." she shrugged, unsure of how to complete such a lie. She watched his expression for a moment and tried to keep her own neutral.

The boy frowned. He grumbled something about a "stupid cut".

Sanja opened her pack and pulled out the tiger skin. She tied the creature's left paws around her waist and its right paws around her neck. Between them, the pelt formed a large, baggy sling.

Jorga looked up at what she had made and his eyes filled with tears. "I'm not a calf!"

"I know you're not," she reassured him. "But you're... your body is conserving its strength. This way I can carry you for a while – just for a while – and then when your strength is back, well then you can run beside me."

# # #

Sanja's hooves flew across the desert, kicking up a small plume of dust.

"Just stop treating me like a calf," the boy whined.

"I'm sorry, Jorga. I just don't like to see you hurt."

"No, you do it all the time!"

"I do not! Why would you say that?"

"Did you tell me it was going to take a year to get home?" the boy growled.

"No," she said. Only the sound of her hooves and her rhythmic breathing filled the spaces between them. "Eventually."

He didn't seem hungry, so they didn't stop to eat.

The moon was full once more and the Trail of Woe was easy to follow in the silver light.

Jorga slept soundly, despite all the jostling, and Sanja found herself in an almost trance-like state. She tried not to think about the boy's injuries, about what could happen to him, or about Kazbo trying to find them.

She had left the Gnome a message, and that was all she had time to do. With three heavy rocks, she pinned the rogue's small clothes down, so they would not blow away, or be disturbed by the scavengers that would start arriving soon after they left. Then with the charred end of a twig, she drew three characters that she knew he would recognize. The "sw" sound, the "ahm" sound, and the "puh" sound.

Sanja thought about nothing beyond just her hooves. Just picking them up and dropping them down, over and over again. Running was the only thing that mattered.

The sky turned pink and then the sun began to rise over her left shoulder.

Jorga woke, but he was not his usual self. He didn't want to eat. He did not even ask to get out of the sling. He didn't want to try to walk.

"Come on. Don't give up on me," she pleaded through clenched teeth. Her lungs were burning and begging for rest, but she ignored them.

He talked some throughout the morning. Much of it was too quiet to make out. Some of it made no sense at all.

"Where's Thurg?" he asked once.

"The trader?" Sanja asked. "The Orc who owned Elizabeth? I don't know where he is. I think they were headed to Ratchet."

"No, my toad."

"Your toad? I don't know." Sanja wiped the sweat out of her eyes. "Didn't you release him up on the mountain?"

Jorga was having a hard time breathing and the gaspy, ragged sound was scaring her more than even Theodore had.

She had yet to use the D-word, but as the afternoon grew late, she used it with reckless abandon. "Don't you die on me, damn it!" she shouted. "Don't you dare die! We're almost there. I can smell it. We're almost at the swamp!"

She was starting to feel dizzy from all the exertion, the lack of food, the lack of water. Her coat was no longer wet with sweat and she was starting to see double images.

Somewhere, far behind her, the sun was setting over her right shoulder.

Suddenly, one of her hooves landed poorly and the two tumbled over into a lump on the road.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Jorga? Are you okay? Are you all right?" She shook the boy by his shoulders and his head flopped back and forth. His body was cold. "Don't! Don't you do that to me!" she demanded.

She pressed her ear to his lips.

She put her ear to his chest.

"No!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Sanja scooped the boy up in her arms and wandered aimlessly in a circle. His arms and legs hung down, lifelessly. "I promised Mom I would take care of you! I promised her!"

She started walking back towards Nijel's Point. "Help... Please... Someone... Help..." she cried. Her voice was quiet and hoarse.

But the road was as empty as it had been all along.

She turned around yet again and stumbled towards the swamp.

"I'll get you help," she whispered. She squeezed him to her chest. "I'll take care of you. I promise. I'll get someone to help us. I'll... I'll find an Ancient. They can make you better. I'll make them cure you. I'll make them. I promise. I promise... I promise..."

Fat, hot tears started to drip on Jorga. They splashed on his fuzzy, black face.

Now, she was bawling like a calf; wailing in the darkness.


	16. Chapter 16

New advertising on fanfiction .net has me fed up. I will continue to mirror stories here, but in protest, I'm moving my primary hosting to http: / / gre7g. kyoht. com /

**Chapter 16**

The days were a blur.

There was hot sun on her back.

The smell of rich, dark soil in her nose.

The feel of the antler-bone digging tool in her hand.

Her nails ached. Her back ached. She had never been so tired, so confused in all of her life.

She slept a lot. She cried a lot. She couldn't manage the strength even to stand.

It rained once. Or perhaps twice? She couldn't remember seeking shelter.

Sometimes it was hard to tell if she was asleep or awake. Perhaps it was all just a horrible, terrible dream.

There was a light, tender touch on her face. A familiar voice.

"Are you okay, Sanja?" Kazbo asked.

She opened her eyes again and was thankful that the light was dim. She didn't know if it was morning or evening. She didn't care. She closed her eyes again.

"I found Theodore at the campsite," he whispered. "What's left of him, at least. There were these huge vultures..."

He resisted the urge to ask.

Kazbo swallowed a lump in his throat. "Where's... Jorga...?"

She opened her eyes once more and ran her fingers slowly across the mound of soil she had been hugging with her arm. The Gnome stared at the dirt and dried blood caked on her fingers.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"I promised my Mom..."

"I know."

He tried to put his arms around her and she nearly smothered him with a hug. She held him like a drowning swimmer clinging to a log.

Then they were both crying.

"He hurt my brother... and I couldn't find anyone to help us. I tried. I tried _so_ hard. But Jorga just... kind'a... faded... I held him in my arms the whole time, but I couldn't do anything."

"I'm so sorry, Sanja. I should never have left. This is all my fault! I will never forgive myself." Kazbo cursed himself repeatedly. "I wish that I had never tried to help that rogue. I was so damn proud of my balloon and he was so charming. I should never have listened to him. I should have seen what sort of monster he was. If I hadn't tried to help, he never would have met you. He never would have hurt Jorga."

"He hurt me too... I told him to stop. I did. I told him. But that only made him do it harder."

She was wailing and shaking. She was so dehydrated that the tears would no longer come. She squeezed the little man until he saw stars behind his eyes.

"Why did he do that? Why did he do that to me? What did I do?"

"I don't know, Sanja. I don't know." He sniffled hard. "I suppose he hated himself so much that he just wanted to hurt everyone. You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything."

# # #

"Eat this, please," he whispered and put yet another soft piece of fruit in her mouth. Her lips were so parched that the sweet juice burned them. "You need your strength... Have you eaten anything since I left?" She could hear the tears in his voice.

She chewed slowly, but refused to open her eyes.

"I need you to come with me," he whispered when she finished.

"No! I promised..."

"You did. You took care of him. There's nothing more you can do for him now."

"No..."

He was pulling on her hand. "Please, Sanja. You know I'm not strong enough to drag you."

# # #

She was laying on some sort of hammock and swinging slowly. A soft wind was blowing across her. Sanja had never been so thirsty in her life.

She opened her eyes and immediately regretted it. She squeezed them closed as hard as she could.

"Where... where is the ground?" she whispered.

"What?"

"The ground! Where is the ground!" Sanja screamed.

"Oh! It's down there," Kazbo laughed. "Don't you remember getting on board? I told you about my idea back for the Brachiator 6000 back when my balloon first crashed."

She opened her eyes once more. Her hands gripped the knotted mesh beneath them until her knuckles started to tingle.

The hammock hung from a box of sorts that made strange whirring and whizzing noises. Ropes extended from the box to strange black grappling hooks that grabbed the nearby clouds. Some of the hooks let go and others grabbed hold in a strange sort of upside-down dance. They had a peculiar sort of rhythm that kept the contraption swinging slowly across the sky. It was sort of like it was falling constantly sideways.

She squeezed her eyes shut once more. "Where is it taking us?"

"To Mulgore, of course!" Kazbo shouted joyfully.

Sanja just shook her head. "No."

Kazbo moved close to her and his voice dropped down low. "What's wrong, Sanja?"

"I can't go back. I failed them. I let my little brother die."

"Don't say that. You did no such thing," the mage said. "You struggled to protect him. That's all they could ever have asked of you. You tried to save him. His death was not your fault."

"No," she whispered, "I can't face them."

There was a long pause while Kazbo petted her face. "Would you rather come back with me?"

She looked at him with one dark, miserable eye.

"You could come to Gnomeregan and meet my family. You could work with me in the library; reading books." He smiled softly at her. "You could write down some of the Tauren lore."

She shook her head. "I'll never be anyone's slave."

"Not as my slave, silly. You'd be there as my guest."

Sanja closed her eyes once more and waited for the swinging to stop.

# # #

Although the vehicle traveled faster than a rider on a horse, the trip was the longest Kazbo had ever taken. The days crept by at a crawl as Sanja ignored the Gnome's attempts to start a conversation. Some days she slept, some days she cried, and there were some days that Kazbo had to needle her relentlessly just to get her to eat.

He had experienced death before, and grieving as well. But despite all his years, he felt helpless to make the pain fade. She would need time to heal. She needed the support of loved ones on those days when she was able to accept it. No one could speed the process.

There were a couple of days before they reached the Thunderhorn mountain range where the desert skies had cleared. Kazbo grounded the device and made camp, waiting for the clouds to return. Sanja slept in the anemic shade of a jacao tree and refused to talk.

But the worst day of all, by far, was during the flight over the mountain itself. He had turned away to give the girl her privacy... with the tiny confines of the hammock, it was the best that he could manage. At first, he had tried landing the craft to heed nature's call, but that was often terrifying. When the clouds were rolling across the sky, it was nearly impossible to set down safely. After what could only be called a "close call," they both had agreed to handle their personal needs over the edge of the craft – just to minimize how often they had to risk descent.

But on this day, he made the mistake of turning back around too soon. She had finished her business, but was still trying to get her trousers back on – getting dressed on a hammock was far harder than either of them could ever have predicted. For some reason, seeing her without her pants caused an outburst of hysterics that lasted all day and deep into the night.

No apology could console her. Turning back around to face her only made things worse. Even trying to talk to her seemed to throw oil on the flames.

Kazbo wanted to land the craft out of fear that the Sanja might fling herself overboard, but the mountains were far too treacherous to risk it.

He could never have predicted this reaction. The three had bathed as a group and frolicked in an oasis pool. He remembered fondly how Jorga had splashed them both, and how they had retaliated as a team. The watery battle raged until the boy finally turned tail and ran back to the safety of the sand and scrub. Kazbo remembered pointing and laughing at his furry, little bottom and how indignant the boy had become. They had not been uncomfortable around him then.

She had changed so much.

He tried not to think about what Theodore could have done to her. He tried not to wonder why she had written her note on the rogue's small clothes.

# # #

Kazbo yawned and shook himself awake. Sanja was sitting upright and gripping one of the ropes that connected the hammock to the Brachiator 6000's whirring engine. She held it close to her body, with both of her arms.

"You look better today." The Gnome smiled.

She looked at him for a moment and smiled timidly before returning her gaze to the green fields below. "I ate the apples," she said. "I drank the water."

"Oh. Well, I'm sure we can find more."

More silence stretched.

"There!" Sanja pointed with an outstretched arm. "Tauren."

"Is it your tribe?"

They had seen three different utankans in as many days, but all of the tents were painted with strange markings that she had not recognized.

"I don't know. They're still far away."

# # #

The sentries surrounded the knotted rope. Although not preparing for a fight, they certainly seemed armed for one. Each carried a hammer or spear. Each wore a bone dagger on their belt.

The girl climbed carefully down and the men stared up in stunned silence. She jumped the last few feet and turned around to face the one elder standing among the sentries.

"Sanja? Could it be?" the older bull gasped. His greying muzzle hung open.

"Hello, Bo-ee," she replied meekly, including the suffix to show her respect.

Elder Bo turned to the man on his left. "Go get Bron and Grenda," he said, but the sentry was too shocked to react immediately. Bo added, "Run."

All that remained of the sentry was the sound of his hooves as he sprinted away.

"I want everyone to meet my savior," Sanja announced, gesturing up the rope. "This is Kazbo Fizzgimbels."

The excited whispers that had surrounded Sanja's unexpected return vanished, and the Gnome's strange contraption descended in silence.

Kazbo looked slowly up at the unbroken wall of towering Tauren-flesh that surrounded him. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

In the past month and a half, Kazbo had grown quite used to the nearly constant company of Tauren. He thought he was accustomed to the race's particular aroma and looking way up into the sky just to talk to Sanja. But none of that could have prepared him for this.

The entire utankan was pressing in around a circle to get a look at the child and Gnome. The smell of fur, sweat, and smoke was tremendous... nearly overwhelming. The bulls were larger than Kazbo had realized any one creature could be. He had met a few Draenei males, and they were large too; but this experience had nothing in common. The Draenei were not enemies. They did not loom over him, shoulder to shoulder, and push and shove to get closer. They didn't clutch weapons in their hands, and stare at him with somber, judgemental expressions.

"Pleased to meet you," Kazbo squeaked in Taurahe.

There was a collective gasp from the mob that surrounded them.

"Let me through! Please let me through!" a deep voice called. A small gap in the crowd opened suddenly and two arms that were as thick as oak trees reached in. Two enormous hands grabbed Sanja by the shoulders. She squeaked in surprise.

The last Kazbo saw of Sanja were her hooves as they vanished into the gap – before it slammed shut behind her.

A silence stretched. It seemed like hours, days, perhaps even years.

"We welcome you, Gnome," Bo finally said; but his slow, deep voice seemed to lack the warmth Sanja's had for even the most casual of conversations. "We thank you for bringing Sanja home to us. You may stay in my tent."

Without waiting for a reply, Bo turned and walked away through a corridor that opened before him. No one said another word and the silence began to stretch once more. Unsure of what to do, Kazbo followed behind.

Two armed sentries fell into position to march behind him.

# # #

Kazbo sat, alone, in the entrance of Bo's tent. The enormous bear hide beneath him was fluffy and soft. The Tauren-sized portions of vegetables and bread were more than enough to eat.

But no one said a word to the little Gnome. Even the cow that had brought him his dinner did not respond to Kazbo's attempts at friendly conversation.

The two sentries that had followed him to the tent stood stock-still, one at either side of the tent's entrance. They had not forbidden him from leaving, but neither had they told him he could go.

So Kazbo sat, alone in Bo's tent, and stared out through the open flap at the utankan's central campfire. The people gathered, they sang, they danced. But no one invited him to join in.

Kazbo watched for hours, hoping he would see Sanja dancing with the others, but he did not.

Eventually, Kazbo tried to sleep, but the party continued late into the night. The drums and commotion made it impossible to rest.

In the morning, he emerged from the tent and the two sentries looked down at him wordlessly. They fell in behind him and marched side by side.

After walking only a few yards, Kazbo turned around and faced one of the guards. "Could you please tell me where I would find Sanja?"

The huge bull grunted and nodded his head. Each of his enormous horns was longer than Kazbo was tall. He walked briskly ahead and Kazbo fell in behind him at a run. The remaining sentry took up the rear.

The trio walked through the maze of empty tents and sleeping Tauren. Some snored as loud as they sang. From the look of it, the revelers had not even bothered with the short walk back to their tents. Instead, they just slept where they fell, under the stars and the moonless sky.

At the edge of the village, they came upon a small campfire that was still blazing. Sanja sat beside it on crossed legs, huddled as close to it as she could manage without getting burned. She rocked slowly in place, crooning softly.

Kazbo ran to her side. "Sanja! You look so nice in your new clothes."

"Oh, Kazbo," the girl croaked.

"You sound terrible..."

Sanja nodded. "It's a Tauren tradition," she explained. "This is Jorga's shteowachi, his funeral. Grief is stored in the lungs, so you must sing it into the fire and let the flames carry all the sadness away with the smoke."

"Do you feel better?"

The girl shrugged. "I'm still sad, but I don't think I can sing any longer."

Sanja stood. The previously stoic sentries grinned like children as she walked over to them. One at a time, they bent their massive heads over to the girl and she kissed each gently on the cheek. "Thank you uncle Hass, uncle Schtota, for looking after my friend. Go get some sleep. I'll keep Kazbo company."

The black bull with the long horns, Hass, kissed Sanja's forehead. "We're so glad you're back." His voice was so deep that Kazbo thought he could feel it vibrating up through his shoes.

The tan bull with the shorter horns, Schtota, touched his forehead to hers. "We worried about you," he whispered.

They turned and walked away. Hass punched Schtota in the shoulder, but the huge bull merely flinched.

# # #

"I'm going to go," Kazbo said. "I'll head back to Gnomeregan."

Sanja smiled and shook her head. Her freshly-brushed mane swayed gently. "There isn't a cloud in the sky. Do you plan to walk?"

"I could," he replied.

She laughed and put a gentle hand to his back. "I know you could. But instead, let me cook you a little breakfast. Then we can roll up some shtumanialo bundles for the party tonight. I still have to sing the story of our adventures for everyone. I have to tell everyone how you rescued me."

She looked down at him. "Don't worry, I'll make sure that no one steps on you during the dance."

Kazbo laughed. "Thanks. I don't suppose you could leave out the part about how I got us stuck in Desolace in the first place..."

She smirked at him.

"I thought not," he sighed. They walked in silence for a bit. "I thought the mood here would be a lot more somber, with the news of Jorga's... passing."

Sanja shook her head. "The utankan scoured the area when we went missing. They found the balloon wreckage, our hoof prints leading back to the stream, and none leading away. They figured we had gone over the falls, even though they never found our bodies.

Sanja took a deep breath and smiled. Kazbo's heart felt lighter just seeing it.

"There was a story once, about a young boy who was surrounded by a raging forest fire. He was doomed; trapped without any route of escape," she explained. "So the sun took him away, body and soul, to the afterlife. The sun didn't want him to suffer pointlessly, but that meant that his family never found his body."

Sanja shrugged as she walked. "There's a lot more to the story than that... an exciting chase through the underworld, and his cousins trying to steal him back. But I guess everyone here sort of hoped that was what happened to us. They hoped that the sun took us away as we fell, so that we wouldn't have to suffer pointlessly."

She picked up a rock and threw it way out into the tall grass that surrounded the camp. Bugs buzzed happily in all directions.

"They already had a shteowachi for the both of us, so finding out what had really happened to Jorga didn't change anything. The tribe is just happy that I'm 'back from the dead'. That doesn't happen every day."

They walked to a smoldering cook fire and Sanja prodded various karras roots to see if any had been baked already.

"You know so many stories," Kazbo said. "I really meant my offer. If you wanted to come back with me..."

Sanja shook her head and smiled. "I would love to, but this is my home." She tried not feel sad when she saw the disappointed expression on the little man's face. "But I _will_ make a pot for you to take back with you. In fact, I'll even show you how to do it, and then when you get home, you can teach little Sorassa how to make them, too."

"Thank you, Sanja, I'd really like that."

Sanja cleared her throat, and addressed him directly:

There was a young Tauren from Mulgore,

Keeping a friend out of peril her chore;

Though parting made him cranky,

She sent him back to his family;

For once safe at home, she won't worry anymore.

Kazbo's face lit up like the sun and his eyes sparkled. He sniffed back a tear. "Sanja! You made up a limerick just for me!"

She grinned and shrugged. Her ears drooped in a Tauren blush. "I did... even if it doesn't rhyme all that well." She added, "But don't expect another! It took me days just to come up with that one."

The end.


End file.
